Crane count offers a seat for music of the morning

May 3, 2008

I went to a symphony a couple weeks ago.

They play daily in the warmer months, but the truth is there’s only one day a year that I really listen to the full performance. That’s the day of the annual crane count – April 19 this year.

Organized across the Midwest by the International Crane Foundation in Baraboo, the crane count is an exercise in citizen science. Biological laymen like myself get to help chronicle the comeback of the sandhill crane, this huge and amazing red-capped bird.

Beyond that, it is reason and license to spend sunrise doing nothing but listening and observing. It is an invitation to witness the music of morning.

Audience members are to be in position by 5:30 a.m. That’s not a challenge for me because my reserved seat is in a counting area in a farm field across the road from our home.

A combination of the lingering dark, the morning mist and the protection of the woods makes the start an experience for the ears more than for the eyes.

At 5:38 a.m., the orchestra begins to tune. The concertmaster bugles from offstage. His raucous, booming staccato is the alarm call of the first crane to proclaim the morning.

Within minutes, the rest of the orchestra joins in, creating a rising cacophony of musicians preparing their instruments. None is yet to be seen. The greatest of all houselights are still dimmed.

The sections of the orchestra – all horn players, distributed across the marshy woods – compete with their individual runs up the scale.

This discordant brass section must share the stage before long. The wild tom turkey adds a counterpoint to the melody with his curt “gobble, gobble, gobble.” The cock pheasant provides the percussion. The great horned owl insists on a mournful solo.

At 5:52 a.m., the mellower French horns (French Canadian that is) broaden the range with a quick arpeggio from a small flock of passing geese, accented by the gentle snare of wind on duck flight feathers.

As the clock ticks past 5:58, there’s a pause. While this orchestra is well rehearsed, it begins and ends movements at its own whim, independent of any score.

Six o’clock and the invisible crane chorus builds to a crescendo, each straining to out-perform the musician next to him. The pheasant adds a raspy rhythm and the performers begin to come out from hiding.

At 6:11 a.m. I record one crane walking and two flying over. Four minutes later, two more cranes fly by and a blast pierces the air. Not the wakeup point in the Nutcracker Suite, but an attempt at dinner by a turkey hunter camouflaged out in the field.

I did not have a solo seat to the morning performance after all.

As the sun lights the scene, the auditory treat turns to a visual one. At 6:22 I see two sandhills walking and feeding and count one group of 15 turkeys and another of 12 – with the hunter hidden in between.

The cranes’ numbers slowly grow as more and more emerge from the woods for the post-performance brunch. From time to time they reprise their song to greet a late arrival.

Scanning the field with a spotting scope confirms seven, then 10, then 16 cranes taking part in the feed.

At 7:10 a.m. something spooks them. I am frantically counting cranes as 26 birds rise up out of the farm field to take their final bow and fly from the stage.

Time for me to pack up and leave this outdoor concert hall and file my review with the International Crane Foundation. There’s no place for it on the counting form, but my evaluation is one word: Bravo.