March 2024 • Nebraskaland 25
with their long beaks for invertebrates
and plants. One sat down in the water
and took a bath. The birds seemed
to wander back and forth across the
bottom, individually or in family
groups. Temperatures were in the 50s
both days with nary a cloud in the sky.
On the fi rst day, when south winds
gusted to nearly 40 mph, some birds
took cover next to willow thickets
growing on the south edge of the
bottom.
On both days, birds were resting,
including on their bellies, soon after
arriving. The birds appeared to be
much more at ease on my second visit,
however, when winds were much
calmer. Some pecked at the grass,
which by now had been beat down
by their presence during the previous
few weeks, possibly eating insects. A
few danced, something I'd seen little
of a week earlier. An hour or so after
the birds arrived, most were resting,
some on their bellies, some standing
on one leg, the other tucked up in their
belly, and others on two legs. Whether
they were upright or lying down, some
cranes had their heads turned and
tucked beneath a wing, some had their
bill pointed down, resting on their
upright neck, and others simply rested
with their head up and eyes closed,
revealing the tiny white feathers on
their eyelids. Some stood in the creek
as they slept.
The cranes that were lying down
got there slowly and awkwardly. The
proportions of a bird's leg and foot
bones diff er greatly from ours. The
thigh and knee of cranes and other
birds are hidden by the feathers on
their bellies. The joint we see between
their two longest and most visible
bones is actually what would be our
ankle, known as the hawk joint. The
lower of those two bones is comparable
to the long bones in our feet, between
our ankle and toes. To sit, the cranes
dropped backward on that hawk joint,
and then settled their bodies forward
onto the ground. I watched some birds
wander for a bit, examining the ground
here and there before picking a spot to
lie down. One bird, upon fi nding that
spot, turned in a circle like a dog might
before settling down.
There were always some cranes
on alert, and the heads of those
resting snapped to attention when
An adult and juvenile crane pause along the stream mere feet from a deadfall.
