Wisconsin’s sandhill cranes thrive despite summer drought

Shifting from a streamlined flight posture, with beak to toes all in alignment, sandhill cranes cup their wings and dangle their legs below in a sight reminiscent of Mary Poppins arriving with her umbrella. Photo by Emily Stone “Turn here, they’re heading north!” I directed my fiancé as we navigated the gravel roads of Crex Meadows Wildlife Area near Grantsburg, Wisconsin. We’d spotted a line of sandhill cranes flying through misty gray sky and were following them toward what we hoped would be a spectacular evening of birdwatching.Despite living in a time when perhaps only 20 pairs of cranes existed in Wisconsin, Aldo Leopold wrote eloquently of the cranes in the “Marshland Elegy” chapter of “A Sand County Almanac.” “When we hear his call we hear no mere bird. We hear the trumpet in the orchestra of evolution.

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