Glorious and Tender Triumph: the sandhill crane returns.

If we conservationists focused a bit less on doomsday predictions ... and a bit more on our many triumphs ... perhaps there'd be less cynicism and more initiative. So this post is a hymn to fine work by many.

Sandhill cranes were extinct as breeding birds in Illinois for nearly a century. Now they’re back, baby.

Birds of Illinois by H. David Bohlen of the Illinois State Museum, published in 1989, states:

"Sandhill cranes probably bred fairly commonly in Illinois until about 1890. The last nest found was in 1872."

Then apparently, a late edit to this long-in-preparation book: 

"Recently they began nesting again, as a few spilled over into Illinois from Wisconsin. Recent breeding records include two downy young with parents on May 24, 1979 in Lake County."[found by dedicated birder Joel Greenburg]

Then he lists more happy little families appearing in 1982 and 1986. This “spillover” was no fluke. A thriving breeding population has since spread among restored wetland, prairie, and savanna forest preserves and state parks throughout northeastern Illinois.

The most public of these new neighbor families is at Deer Grove in Palatine.
Cranes started nesting a year or two after Openlands and Forest Preserve staff and volunteers
 started clearing brush and restoring habitat. All these seemingly miraculous photos
were taken there, by volunteer steward Lisa Culp Musgrave. 

Cranes need large open areas to raise their chicks or “colts.” To be successful, parents need years of learning to develop the needed toughness and smarts. “Although some start breeding at two years of age, Sandhill Cranes may reach the age of seven before breeding. They mate for life—which can mean two decades or more—and stay with their mates year-round. Juveniles stick close by their parents for 9 or 10 months after hatching.”

Both parents incubate the eggs. Both parents tend the chicks.

“Sandhill cranes raise one brood per year. Both members of a breeding pair build the nest using plant material from the surrounding area. Nest sites are usually marshes, though occasionally on dry land. Females lay one to three (usually two) oval, dull brown eggs with reddish markings. Both parents incubate the eggs for about 30 days. The chicks are precocial; they hatch covered in down, with their eyes open, and able to leave the nest within a day. The parents brood the chicks for up to three weeks after hatching, feeding them intensively for the first few weeks, then gradually less frequently until they reach independence at 9 to 10 months old.”

Though extinct in Illinois in the 1930s, according to a fine article in the Chicago Tribune, two dozen breeding pair did survive in Wisconsin. Our culture started protecting cranes and habitat. The population in the upper Midwest is now between 65,000 and 95,000, researchers estimate.

"It's an incredible recovery. It’s one of the best Midwest bird stories,” said Rich Beilfuss, president of the International Crane Foundation. “They’re back in people’s lives.”

Adults tending a nest with eggs sing a duet together every evening and morning. Lisa found them performing one day in mid March. She recorded their concert, which you can attend, through the magic below:

The mating dances and artistic routines led to progeny. Above, a parent has caught a fat worm and offered it to the colts. One grabbed one end immediately, but before it could swallow it down …

… the other sibling grabbed the other end. According to Lisa, a tug of war followed.
That’s what’s happening above. 

For the photo above, Lisa's label characterized the colts as “playing.” Her Facebook post for the same photo said, “Normal sibling bickering!” Often it’s hard to tell the difference, in humans or cranes. Look again at the size of the parent's legs. Imagine being as small as these chicks and looking up. Imagine the adult, looking down.

Here, the hungry colts have no time for anything but food.
"Will mom or dad find something? Will I get it ... before that pesky sibling does?"

At Deer Grove, food is plentiful. The main enemy of the chicks is coyotes. Adults actively fight off all coyotes that come after their colts, but that’s a lot easier in the open. It seemed odd at first that the crane family at Deer Grove often hung out on mowed grass in the picnic area, fairly close to people and dogs. That may be partly a strategy to avoid coyotes.

x

Coyotes prowl mostly unseen through the underbrush.
They are the main cause of crane chick mortality.

In a dense wetland or prairie, cranes are well camouflaged.
But when coyotes are trying to get at the colts, the dense vegetation can get in the way.

At Deer Grove, the parents regularly take the chicks out onto the mowed lawn of the picnic area.
You'd think they'd be worried about people and dogs, but they worry about coyotes more. 

Lisa says that the colts find the lawn and bike trail great fun. 

The cranes wander wherever and whenever there aren't too many people,
finding grasshoppers and worms, and letting the colts play. 

If you happen to be at Deer Grove East and notice thoughtless (or even well-intentioned) people harassing (trying to get close to) the cranes, pestering them, or worse yet, letting dogs
illegally off leash, you might try to give those people a meaningful look.
Or, worst case scenario, call 911 and report to FPD police. 

This fat little fuzzball has a lot of work and learning ahead of it. Learn to avoid predators.
Learn to fly. Learn to feed itself. Learn to migrate to Florida, following parents, this fall.

Babies need protein. Adult eat mostly vegetation: seeds, bulbs, shoots, and berries. But they're omnivores, also eating aquatic invertebrates, other insects, frogs, mice, and most anything that we'd like to eat. Waste corn lying in the fields is a major fuel during migration.

The parents respond to predators by blasting them with trumpeting so loud it hurts your ears. (If you visit the International Crane Foundation in Wisconsin, a visionary organization of worldwide importance, where the world’s rarest cranes are bred in cages, it’s a wonderful experience, but bring earplugs, if you want to go close to the cages.)

To defend their colts, adults will leap into the air and kick with their feet. They are formidable.



These magnificent birds would prefer to be left in peace. At least to a degree, but nearly their entire Illinois population lives in the Chicago metro area. They appreciate private and public conservation land … including the marshes in the centers of subdivisions. They can’t raise families in cornfields. For now at least, our culture has been doing better by them.

Acknowledgments

Photos and video taken this spring in Deer Grove East Forest Preserve by Lisa Culp Musgrave. Deer Grove is owned by the Forest Preserve District of Cook County. For ongoing crane photos, check out Lisa's Facebook page, for example: https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=1639967169385169&set=pcb.1639970279384858&type=3&theater

Info in quotes is from:

The Birds of Illinois by H. David Bohlen

The Birder's Handbook by Paul Ehrlich et. al.

Cornell Lab of Ornithology: https://www.allaboutbirds.org/guide/Sandhill_Crane/lifehistory

International Crane Foundation: https://www.savingcranes.org/species-field-guide/sandhill-crane/

Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sandhill_crane

A fine article in the Chicago Tribune that quotes birder Bob Fisher is at: http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/local/breaking/ct-met-sandhill-cranes-20171115-story.html

Mating Dances

"Courtship includes loud rattling calls accompanied by elaborate dances and threat postures. Dance includes head bobbing, bowing and leaping, grass tossing and running with wings extended."

The Trib connects to video of crane mating dance with amusing naive human commentary ("they're fighting" and "they're performing for us").

Naming Names

Brad Semel of the Illinois Department of Natural Resources deserves Glorious Credit for his stewardship of the northern Illinois marshes where many of the earliest returning cranes bred.

Ed Collins and Brad Woodson of the McHenry County Conservation District were also great contributors, as were Jim Anderson, Ken Klick, Debbie Maurer and others of the Lake County Forest Preserves.

Tom Vanderpoel of Citizens for Conservation installed a floating island in a small pond at Flint Creek Savanna, and a pair of cranes moved right in. Their colts avoid coyotes in part because neighbors sometimes chase the coyotes away when the family makes a stand on their lawns - all demonstrating that fairly small plots of private land can host cranes too.

If you know of more credits that deserve to be listed, please add them under "Comments."