Though I’ve been a birder for almost 20 years, nothing had ready me for experiencing a Sandhill Crane migration alongside Nebraska’s Platte River, one of many largest wildlife migrations on Earth. However there I used to be, making an attempt to soak up the sound of intense bugle calls and numerous feathers flapping, mixed with the sight of flock after flock of cranes flying overhead and crane dances and fights unfolding on the river. Inside minutes of watching my first sundown in opposition to a backdrop of cranes, I knew that pictures and movies have been only a small style of what it appears like being inside toes of this unimaginable migration.
However I wasn’t there simply to crane watch. I had traveled by means of wind, storms, and a blizzard to volunteer for every week throughout crane season on the Iain Nicolson Audubon Center at Rowe Sanctuary as a part of Audubon’s job share program. What I encountered was not solely over half one million cranes but additionally a gaggle of passionate volunteers who traveled far and extensive to share their love of those magnificent creatures with others.
Although not as intensive as they’re as we speak, crane excursions have been held at Rowe Sanctuary since the 1970s. Now crane season lasts a couple of month, from March to April. All through the previous 50 years, volunteers have been an integral a part of the middle and, throughout the previous decade, have made the season what it’s as we speak.
“Crane season wouldn’t occur with out the volunteers,” says Amanda Hegg, Rowe Sanctuary’s senior conservation affiliate who took on an interim function of managing the 2024 volunteer program. She factors out that the middle hosts almost 200 guests taking part in crane excursions every day. “So we want much more folks than simply the employees at Rowe to make that occur in a accountable means for the cranes.”
It was clear to me that this was the case after taking part on this yr’s cohort at Rowe. Within the months main as much as arriving on the Sanctuary, we joined coaching to make sure we have been ready to tackle numerous roles. As soon as we started volunteering, most of our days began effectively earlier than dawn, waking up earlier than the cranes to steer morning excursions crammed with fowl lovers and photographers to fowl blinds alongside the river. We answered crane habits questions and ensured our teams didn’t disturb the birds as they awoke and ready to take off in unison to feed within the close by fields.
Noon shifts have been crammed with interacting with visitors on the paths—telling them about Rowe’s work to conserve and restore the Platte River—together with cleansing, answering calls, making ready for photographers to remain in in a single day blinds on the river, filling reward store orders, and aiding with different duties that supported day-to-day operations. When night got here round, we welcomed and led visitors on sundown excursions to observe the cranes put together to roost.
Whereas assembly different volunteers and sharing what led us right here, a standard theme arose—most of them weren’t native. In actual fact, of the 80 to 90 volunteers Rowe receives throughout crane season, round 70 of them usually are not from the realm, Hegg confirms.
Some are pretty new to the crane migration expertise, like spouse and husband Diane and Tom Anderson who knew nothing concerning the spectacle of crane season simply three years in the past. However after an in a single day images blind expertise at Rowe, they have been hooked and have continued to make the trek from Minnesota to volunteer.
Others are veteran crane lovers, like Jane Adams who counts the species as her spark fowl and has been touring to Rowe from California for eight years. Her motive for coming again? “Simply seeing folks’s faces after they see the birds for the fly-in…their eyes get actually large, some folks’s jaws drop…and so they simply have a look at you with such awe [on] their face.”
For Pamela Bergmann—a recurrent volunteer and a stewardship board member—her first introduction to the Sandhill Cranes at Rowe was in 2010 whereas watching a documentary. She needed to expertise it for herself and flew from Alaska to attend each a morning and night tour—and, in flip, was awestruck. “The cranes pierced my soul and stole my coronary heart,” she recollects fondly. “And it was such a tremendous spectacle that I needed to come again to volunteer.” Now she works to additional Rowe’s mission and encourages others to spend migration season volunteering on the Sanctuary.
Since out-of-towners make up nearly all of their volunteers, the Sanctuary offers housing for them. “We’re making an attempt to decrease the barrier for folks with the ability to assist out,” says Hegg. “We would like it to be an excellent expertise that everybody can have entry to.”
Sharing a home and a love of those cranes additionally encourages the volunteers to bond, as many spend not less than every week or extra collectively. They socialize throughout their free time and even take turns cooking dinners for the group. “We’ve developed friendships which might be lasting past being right here at Rowe,” says Adams.
After all, native volunteers are important to this system as lots of them assist year-round. Anthony J. Santoyo lives 40 minutes from Rowe and has been commuting each day on lengthy weekends throughout crane season for greater than a decade. He’s impressed by Rowe’s dedication to preserve the Platte River habitat for the cranes and different wildlife.
As my week at Rowe drew to an finish, I used to be as soon as once more watching the cranes at sundown as big flocks of them landed near our blind. This time a gaggle of faculty college students joined our tour. The volunteers have been proper—seeing the scholars expertise this migration for the primary time as they stared in awe was an unimaginable feeling.
I’m hopeful that they are going to be spurred to guard these birds and encourage the subsequent era to do the identical—and I’m reminded of how the Sandhill Crane migration season at Rowe is a chief instance of one of many unimaginable ways in which folks and birds intersect.
As Santoyo says, “Not solely do the Sandhill Cranes migrate by means of right here—additionally they deliver a migration of individuals from everywhere in the world…they migrate by means of the [Central Flyway] hourglass because the cranes do.”
Will you be a part of this migration, too?
To study how one can volunteer with Rowe Sanctuary throughout Sandhill Crane migration season and past, visit their website.