By David Horst sandhill7@gmail.com
FREMONT, Wis -- For a short time on a recent Sunday, I felt a little like Father Crane.
It was a natural reaction to the
following situation.
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| Chuck leads crane #302 |
I am running through a cut hay
field. My arms are … well … flapping.
Running behind me are four
sandhill cranes. I begin to separate from them and one or two of the cranes
open their 5-foot wingspan and float up and over my head, landing slightly in
front and on either side of me.
It sounds like I’m describing some
strange nature lover’s dream – and it would be a good one – but this was
reality. As pleasant a reality as it might have been, it was not what we wanted
to have happen.
We were on a dead-end farm road
south of Fremont to release these young cranes back into the wild so they could
link up with their peers before the migration south. They had been in the care
of The Feather Rehabilitation Center near New London, which is to say they were
in the care of Pat Fisher. She is a one-woman nonprofit operation.
The cranes had come to her from
around the state, not injured but kicked out of their nests, probably by their
siblings.
Female sandhill cranes typically
lay two eggs, though normally only one of the young makes it to maturity. It
may be predation of the egg or young bird by skunks, raccoons, foxes or
coyotes. Or it may be the smaller of the two coming up short in survival of the
fittest.
Nature may be beautiful, but she
often is not kind.
