More on Cranes

I wanted to add a few more pictures and some facts about the Sandhill Cranes.  Bryan Pfeiffer of Vermont Bird Tours told us about the Phyllis Haehnle Memorial Sanctuary near Jackson, Michigan.  It is a huge marsh that the cranes spend the night in as they are readying for their trip south.  They go out during the day and forage in the farm fields around the area. 

The waiting crowd.

I think the lady in red is the granddaughter of the woman that left money to preserve the marsh.

We arrived at 5:30 (don't forget by this point we were pretty far west in the eastern time zone).  The sun was setting over the marsh and a line of people were sitting quietly with cameras and scopes waiting for the cranes to arrive.  I could see some out in the marsh already - standing in the shallow water.  Finally around 6:15 they really started flying in - groups of 5, 10, 15, 20.  Or thereabouts.  From all directions.  Croaking.  Flying right over our heads so that their features were plain to see.  They were fantastic.  Monday there had been a count of individuals that reached over 2000.  Some of the groups were in the classic goose V formation. 

Beautiful evening - marsh in the background.

They were hard to see after they landed in the swamp - it was pretty far away.  We heard another kind of croak and I thought - funny sounding crane - and someone said 'here come two Trumpeter Swans!'  I got to see them through someone's scope. 

As we watched thep cranes flying in the sun was setting the swamp a-glow with it's last light.  The nearly full moon began to rise over the tops of the still colorful leaves on the trees on the hill behind the swamp.  It really was tremendously beautiful. 

The cranes were what everyone was watching but at the same time hundreds and hundreds of blackbirds were coming in to the swamp for the night.  Clouds of them.  There were lots of robins around and I heard and saw a bluebird. 

We also got to see a Whooping Crane.  There has been one, an individual that was raised by humans and released, living with this flock of Sandhills.  We all kept watching for it and suddenly, there it was, flying right over our heads with two Sandhill Cranes.  They are strikingly white and there was no doubt who he was.  There are about 500 in the total US and this guy is the only known one in the State of Michigan.   He is three years old and there is still hope that he'll find his own kind someday.

Here are some basic crane facts.  4 feet tall.  Wing span of 6 feet.  Males can weigh 12lbs, females 9.5lbs.  (For those of you that know our large gray cat, Wallace, he weighs somewhere in the crane weight area - imagine him 4 feet tall with wings.)  They are very light for their size, that's for sure.  They also have a peculiar wind pipe.  It's 4 feet long.  The neck is 2 feet long.  How does it work?  It makes a loop next to the breast bone before it attaches to the lungs.  Another mystery of evolution.  They are the oldest living bird species.  A fossil found in Nebraska dates back 9 million years. 

We camped for the night in an rv park near the sanctuary and in the morning - sun doesn't rise till a bit after 8, I could hear the cranes flying overhead on their way to fields.  We left the campground after laundry and tidying the van and drove around till we saw a field with about 100.  Sam took all the crane pictures and has posted them on his blog entry.  They were very hard to photograph flying but he did well.  They were so striking with the setting sun on their wings and backs.

We did a lot of driving Saturday and nearly crossed Michigan but stopped in Niles for the night.  Another rv park.  The lady that ran the place was like Mrs. Freda Cook (only a couple people will get that reference, sorry) and posted signs everywhere with the little strips of sticky tape that you can punch letters into.  In the bathroom 'conserve soap one push only'.  Funny thing, the soap dispensers were empty.  Over the trash - 'bathroom trash only'.  In the shower many notes about how to use it.  My favorite - in the toilet stall - 'hold handle down till stool FLUSHES'. 

Sunday we headed for Chicago.  We stopped first in Indiana at the Indiana dunes on Lake Michigan.  Beautiful day - water as still as anything.  Huge sandy dunes and a nice sandy beach we played on.  Only about 5 people there.  We could just make out the skyline of Chicago across the lake.  We then drove non-stop to Chicago.  We kept on secondary routes till midway through Indiana and then had to get on the interstate.  I did plan to do the drive on Sunday on purpose - hoping it would reduce truck traffic.  It was fine and the van chugged right along.  More wind of course but we are getting used to it.  The land, or what used to be land, around Gary, Indiana and all the way to Chicago is grim.  Power lines, generating stations, factories with smoke and flames coming out of stacks, rusted out, used up vehicles and buildings...  It was depressing.  One of our favorite authors, Bill Peet, wrote a book called The Wump World about just such a place.  The people are call the Pollutions.  They start with a nice place and use it up, wreck it, leave it in shambles and move on.  There is a glimmer of hope in the end and I wish for the same ending for this area. 

One of our goals in Chicago was to visit the Legoland Discovery Center and visit we did.  Found it by sheer luck as the Googlemap directions were sadly lacking.  I happened to look off the highway right at the right moment and saw it and veered off the exit that we were already upon and there we were!  It's in a designed village.  An architect designed thing with streets and stores - weird.  But Lego land was fantastic.  We spent three hours there.  They have lego creations of all kinds of things.  Huge.  A giraffe more than life size.  Barak Obama - and it looks like him, Indiana Jones, Batman, Darth Vadar.  We did find out they have metal frames inside but still.  They have about 20 feet of a lego city, Chicago of course, with scale models of buildings in Chicago.  The lego Sears Tower is about 9 feet tall.  There are fact posters about how many bricks and how many hours they all took and how many the real buildings took.  Well, not bricks but money.   A ride through a tunnel with rats and jesters and cooks and dungeons and more - all made with legos.  Lego building challenges, and a lego 'class'.  We did it all as well as a purchase. 

Sadly our camera batteries were completely dead and we can't seem to get them charged so we are lacking in some pictures.  We will try to remedy that tomorrow.

We are staying with a friend I met at Ashokan - Fiddle and Dance Camp.  She has a nice apartment and gave us garage space and our own keys and even the keys to her car if we want!  Her directions were perfect and we landed her last night very glad to be with a friend.  It's been very warm and there were many thunderstorms last night.  Oh yes, the Sears Tower gets hit over 650 times a year by lightning.  Probably a few times last night.  There was a lot of lightning. 

Today we spent 5 hours at the Lincoln Park Zoo.  Just a 15 minute walk from where we are staying.  Still no camera so no pictures but it was actually really nice to be relieved of the camera for a while.  So many people only seem to see what there is to see through the camera and not in real life.  Another really warm day - 70s.  We were hot.

Sam had an interesting experience with a Mountain Lion.  It was lying in the back of its outdoor area and he started staring at it and it started staring back.  (I came along during this standoff and it never paid any attention to me.)  It was clearly feeling uncomfortable and kept twitching and behaving in an agitated way.  I told Sam that if you ever encounter a Mountain Lion in the wild you must never turn your back on it - you must maintain eye contact.  I've even heard that they make hats with eyes on the back for people to wear in places that are having trouble with Mountain Lion attacks.  So he kept staring and the lion kept staring and then he got distracted and looked away and boom - out came the lion at a run and rushed him - only there was a nice tall iron bar and wire mesh wall in between us.  But Sam turned back to look just in time to see the lion about 8 feet away and running and was startled for sure.  Yikes. 

Tomorrow is art museum day we think.  More to follow!  This catches us up.  Pictures soon I hope.