A family of sandhill cranes |
SIMPLY LIVING
April 29, 2013
I’ve become captivated by a family of sandhill cranes.
First thing in the morning, I reach for the binoculars to see
if I can locate their whereabouts. Are
they still on their island nest or have they already begun their daily trek along
the shoreline? Once spotted, I eat
breakfast contentedly. If I can’t find
them, I still eat breakfast but I do so with a certain amount of anxiety…
So many things could go wrong. Yesterday, I saw the first alligator of the
season. It was a relatively small one,
maybe four-and-a-half-feet long. Still, a
gator of any size poses a serious threat to a week-old bundle of fluff.
Even a young alligator can pose a threat to baby cranes |
I shouldn’t worry. Sandhill
crane parents are excellent protectors. From
hours of observation, I know how aware they are of their surroundings. During the past week, I’ve watched them scare
away water birds and bellow warning cries to other cranes flying overhead. They’ve cocked their heads skyward to track
the flight path of an osprey, jumped and spread their wings wide when startled
by large, grass-grazing carp swishing through the shallow water. In 2009, the last time a pair of cranes raised
a hatchling on our lake, I watched as the adult birds scared away both an otter
and an alligator!
In 2009, a nesting pair of cranes managed to keep an otter away from their eggs |
Still, the attachment I’ve formed with this latest grey-feathered
family has superseded reason. Something
about watching the adult cranes raise their baby has triggered my own maternal
instincts. Ever since the egg hatched, I’ve
felt protective and somewhat responsible for its health and wellbeing. I know it’s not my job to tend to its needs. The best I can do is to be an observer accurately
documenting events that transpire. But that
doesn’t preclude me from hoping for a positive outcome. Especially because I know positive outcomes
don’t always happen.
When I was growing up in Yardley, Pa., our house fronted on
a small lake occupied by several families of ducks. Every year when duck eggs hatched, I’d watch in
awe and fascination as the baby birds followed their mother, swimming in a
straight line from one end of the lake to the other. As the days went by, however, I noticed fewer
and fewer chicks. Snapping turtles were
the culprits, capturing those sweet little ducklings by their webbed feet and
pulling them underwater. I tried not to
let it bother me and mostly succeeded. At
a young age, I learned to accept the inevitabilities of nature. I realized one animal’s loss was another’s
gain. The concept of survival of the
fittest became a real life lesson. After
all, every creature needs to eat, including the snapping turtles in
Pennsylvania and the alligators in Florida.
Knowledge, however, doesn’t prevent emotions from flowing. Consider how Ralph and I felt when we
realized the cranes in our lake had abandoned the second egg in their nest after
their first egg hatched.
Initially, we felt
doubt.
Deserted egg |
“They’re probably going back to the nest at night to sit on
it,” I suggested after watching the birds wander away from the remaining egg that
first day.
Two days later, I felt differently.
“They’re not coming back,” I reported to Ralph after
surveying the situation from my rowboat.
“They’ve abandoned it. They’ve
even built a new nest on another spit of land.”
Upon hearing this news, my daughter Jenny – herself a new
mother of twins – was distraught.
“How could they do that?” she bemoaned by phone. “Can’t you do anything?”
Her questions pulled me back into a pragmatic mode.
“There’s nothing we can do,” I tried to explain. “If the cranes decided to abandon the egg,
there must be a reason. Maybe it wasn’t
viable or they knew they couldn’t raise both.
I don’t know why they did it but that’s just how it is.”
Sometimes, “just how it is” is the only explanation.
For now, the crane family in our lake is doing well. Every day the youngest member grows bigger,
stronger and more capable of taking care of itself. Hopefully, the baby bird will continue on the
path to adulthood without encountering any life-threatening incident.
For me, regardless of the outcome, the entire experience is
a gift from nature. I grew up watching
ducklings follow their mother in Silver Lake.
As an adult, I’m doing the same with sandhill cranes.
Although I worry about them and
fret when I don’t see them with my binoculars, most of the time I find myself smiling. I could do worse than be a watcher of birds.