Nebraskaland

March 2021 • Nebraskaland 67 you can literally have thousands of cranes outside your window. Whether you're watching them return to their roost in the evening or leave to feed in the morning, they come in waves, producing a cacophony of sound that can seem deafening, rivaled in this state only by the crowd in Memorial Stadium on a fall Saturday. Not only do you see and hear the cranes, you feel them. That sound is what I'm referring to when I tell people they need to experience the cranes. When I christened the island blind in March 2018, it was everything I'd hoped it would be. The cranes didn't fi ll the river in front of me until after sunset. But with birds 30 yards from the window, I kept photographing them well into darkness, silhouetted by the lights from the Grand Island Interchange. The cranes will let you sleep at night. The darker it gets, the quieter they get. There's always the chance they will wake you, though, when something, I'm never sure what, disturbs them in the middle of the night, and their deafening roar returns as the birds rise from the river and look for another place to sit back down. I was awake, sipping coff ee I had packed in a thermos and eating a muffi n, the following morning when the light murmur of cranes outside my window turned to a roar. The birds wouldn't be as close as I'd liked at sunrise. That's life for a photographer. And there were still photos to be had. It's not just cranes you can see and photograph from Chad's blind. I've had a beaver crawl up on the sand in front of the blind. Snow geese were mixed in with the cranes on one trip. A northern harrier stopped to chew on a snow goose carcass stuck on a sandbar on another. Ducks and Canada geese are almost always around, and there's a good chance white-tailed deer will cross the river nearby. And last, but not least, a pair of bald eagles decided to build a nest in a cottonwood about 200 yards downriver after the island blind was built. Staying in this blind is a commitment and not for the meek. The river isn't deep, but you will need chest waders to reach it, and the strength to pull through the occasional patch of "quick sand" you will encounter on the 150-yard crossing. Chad provides a small boat you can use to haul your gear to the blind and a cot to sleep on, but you'll need to bring your own cold-weather camping gear, dinner and breakfast, and whatever adult beverage you'd like to sip on while you listen to the cranes settle in for the night. And you can't be bothered by going to the restroom in something called a Luggable Loo (Google it.). And once you're in the blind, you will stay there until the cranes leave the following morning. Fail to do so and you will scare the birds, spoil your trip The interior of the blind is big enough to sleep two, but might require packing lighter than the author does on solo trips, or stashing gear outside a screened back door when photographing cranes in the evening and morning.

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