TERRE HAUTE —
Just before midnight last night, spring officially slipped quietly into our back yards, but I doubt that any of us noticed it much this morning as we slurped our coffee or downed our eggs over this newspaper. In fact, there is nothing official about spring’s arrival at all. It comes to us gradually, in a warm south breeze and with the sap running in the veins of our maples. And, this year, it has come not only on the backs of our pond’s peeping frogs, but also on the brilliant white wings of a pair of whooping cranes that decided to take up temporary quarters in a field just east of our place.
I wish I could say that I spotted the two big birds first, but I can’t.
A friend of ours who works at the local bank in town, whose name by the way is Donella Crane — a fact not lost in the good-humored ribbing she’s been taking — told my wife about them a week ago last Saturday.
Donella drives past a covered bridge and over the muddy waters of the Big Raccoon on the way to her teller’s window each day, and she noticed the snow white oddities in a field as she glanced through her passenger-door window one morning. Joanie mentioned the cranes every day afterward.
One of the things I love most about my wife is that she rarely passes up an opportunity to listen to those frogs or to get her hands in the dirt or to look for the squirrel that has built a penthouse for himself a good 50 feet up in a sycamore that looms over our hillside. She loves where we live because we hardly live there alone; there are always turtles or geese or deer around to entertain us. So, as we left the church parking lot Sunday to head home for lunch, I wasn’t a bit surprised when she said, “Let’s go out to the creek to see those birds.”
Within a few minutes we were standing in the stubble along the edge of a muddy cornfield looking at what appeared to be two bright plastic bags on legs milling around 400 yards away. Now, I can squint myself down to fairly decent eyesight when necessary, but I told Joanie that we needed to get home to grab my binoculars — the same pair my grandfather called his “looks” — and come back to our observation post before our stiff-legged friends moved on. We did just that, stopping at home just long enough to grab our Audubon Field Guide off the bookcase and my battered old binoculars case.
The birds were in the same spot, but we were still too far away to see them clearly. We knew that whooping cranes are easily confused with egrets, a bird that is often seen in our parts, and we wanted to be sure that we were, in fact, looking at the real deal. But still in our Sunday shoes and with a stiff north wind in our faces, we headed home happy that we’d at least seen what we had.
A phone call to Donella and several hours later found me near the field again, better equipped this time in boots that were already caked with our sticky clay and in blue jeans and corduroy shirt and ball cap. I wanted to see the birds again, wanted to know that they were cranes, that they had black-tipped wings and a daring dash of red atop the crest of their heads. Knowing I shouldn’t try to approach the birds if I spotted them, I spent over an hour clomping in the mud around the edges of the fields, looking off into the distance for the shallow pools left by receding flood waters. I eventually crossed the road to inspect the calm, green drainage ditches that run toward the foamy brown creek that takes in all the water the Army Corps of Engineers can feed it from Cecil Harden Lake over a dozen winding miles away. But I never saw the birds.
Whooping cranes are rare. In fact, they’re protected under the Endangered Species Act, so it’s illegal to harm them in any way. On the verge of extinction by the time World War II roared through our history, there were, according to the Indiana Department of Natural Resources, only about 525 of them in existence just three years ago, and only 375 of those are left in the wild. In the past 10 years, they have been captive-bred, then taught to follow ultra-light aircraft so they could learn their migratory route from central Wisconsin to the Gulf Coast, mostly in Florida. Some cranes are outfitted with transmitters so groups like the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, the International Crane Foundation and the Whooping Crane Eastern Partnership can learn more about their trips and habitats.
The huge birds — some may stand as tall as 5 feet and have wingspans of more than 7 feet — also have been reared by foster parents. In past years, whooping crane eggs have been placed in the nests of much more common sandhill cranes in hopes that the latter will raise them. When I read of that program in that old Audubon Guide of ours, reprinted 20 years ago, there were only about 50 whooping cranes alive.
Disappointed by my Sunday evening hike, I contacted Donella again, and I told her to call me at work if she saw the birds the next day. Sure enough, she called after lunch to let me know that they had been spotted, so like most of my students, I pealed out of our school parking lot as soon as I could that day. I was on a mission …
The wind was no less cruel as I spotted the cranes that gray afternoon from my truck window. I had no intention of getting very close to them. I had read that 200 yards is considered more than near enough. I had grabbed my camera this time around, and within a few feet of my tailgate, I stood and watched the pair while drops of rain spat down my neck.
The birds are magnificent things, and they well aware that I was there, but not so panicked that they stopped bending their unbelievably long necks down to the chilly water to bob for a frog or tadpole. I couldn’t help but wonder, with so many other fields and wetlands and ditches between here and Wisconsin, why this pair chose us, graced us, with their presence. Then, in an instant, they pulled themselves off the ground in a flutter and disappeared into the wood line.
I have learned since that these whoopers are known to many others, particularly the Wabash Valley Audubon Society. Its president, Marty Jones, used a spotting scope to identify the leg bands of the pair. Officially, they were 10-03 and W1-06, and they had spent their winter in Colleton County, South Carolina. A Parke County field was just a rest stop on their way to Necedah National Wildlife Refuge in Wisconsin. I’m glad they dropped in.
I used to think that it was only in my youth that I was excitable, that little things fired me up, helped me dream, made me happy, but I had it all wrong. Two whooping cranes came to call on us last week, their trumpet-like honks echoing off the cottonwoods.
And to think, today is just the first day of spring.
Mike Lunsford can be reached by e-mail at hickory913@aol.com or by writing to him c/o The Tribune-Star, P.O. Box 149, Terre Haute, IN 47808. Read more of Mike’s stories at http://tribstar.com/mike_lunsford, and visit his website at www.mikelunsford.com.
Mike Lunsford
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Tribune-Star columnist Mike Lunsford
Discussion
THE OFF SEASON: Craning to see elegance in flight
- Mike Lunsford
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MIKE LUNSFORD: Time to become one of the boys of summer again …
Besides writing for a living, I teach school, and I’m not ashamed to tell people that I still love my classroom. I’ve been a teacher for 33 years, all of them in the same school district, and virtually all of them in the same building. But I also have to tell you that if the next few weeks don’t slide by pretty quickly, I may just let loose of the last thread of sanity from which I have been dangling for a while now. There are a lot of teachers out there who feel the same way.
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MIKE LUNSFORD: It’s time for us to get the real lowdown on dirt…
I have had my hands in the soil as of late. Two Fridays ago, I planted a viburnum bush, three chrysanthemums and a yellow poplar, not because it happened to be Earth Day, but because it was sunny and warm, and I had the whole afternoon to myself. The dirt I scraped out of and back into the shallow holes I dug near a backyard picket fence smelled good, and when dampened with a few sprinkles of water, it soon found its way into the deep wrinkles of my knuckles and under my fingernails. For the most part, I have nothing but good things to say about dirt.
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MIKE LUNSFORD: Make big money: Raise worms at home for fun and profit…
When I think about all of the crazy things my brother and sister and I did just to make a few dollars when we were kids, I can’t help but feel a little sorry for teens this summer as they try to find jobs in what is supposed to be a very tight market. Money, to say the least, was a rare commodity when we were growing up, but you have to at least give us credit for trying.
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MIKE LUNSFORD: ‘When lilacs last in the dooryard bloom’d…’
Had white lace curtains been hanging in the west window of my cabin, I would have had a perfect Wyeth painting to watch last Thursday. A gentle breeze was wafting through my screens, and the sunlight of a warm late March day was fractured by the window sill as it poured onto my legs and feet. I could catch the scent of lilacs as it was carried in by that wind, and it and the subtle melody of the chimes that hang just outside made me as lazy as an old cat.
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MIKE LUNSFORD: A report from the country as a new season brings sense of renewal
Regardless of what the calendar may yet say, spring has happened. It couldn’t have come too soon, and it wasn’t just last week and its windy 70s that have convinced me. I have been keeping a journal of sorts in my head for a fortnight now, stashing away reports of birds and buds and sounds in the crammed cabinets of my mind, all in a file marked, “The New Season.”
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MIKE LUNSFORD: Feeding time at the homestead draws a host of new guests
I stepped outside into the warmth of an unusually mild early March morning last week to do what I always do just before I grab my briefcase and book bag and lunch bag and head off to work. It’s nearly always dark when I leave, even as the sun gets up earlier and earlier in the late winter, so I often go about the business of feeding our cats with porch lights on and a flashlight in hand.
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MIKE LUNSFORD: Taking a road less traveled in this illogical life
If you can still recall reading the poetry of Robert Frost in your high school English class years ago, I imagine that you can conjure up a line or two from his “The Road Not Taken.”
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MIKE LUNSFORD: Books open our eyes to that which we will never see
I got a letter last week from a friend, Sister Margaret Quinlan, who lives amidst the beauty of the St. Mary-of-the-Woods campus. Besides the email space and the time she invests in describing the flowers and trees and birds that she shares with her roomies out there, as well as her accounts of teaching and traveling, Margaret most often writes about books. She loves them, and she knows I do, too.
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MIKE LUNSFORD: Hoping to master the art of taking a nap
I got away from work as early as I could one day last week. It was a cloudy day, filled with grayness and rain, and my head felt as if I had inhaled my pillow the night before. My throat suggested I’d swallowed a wood rasp, too, and my eyes felt as though I was looking through someone else’s glasses. Yet, I had work do, this column being on the list of chores.
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MIKE LUNSFORD: Windy companion finally gives him the cold shoulder
The wind came to visit us this week. We live on the knob of a hill that overlooks a Raccoon Creek valley, and it is a breezy spot year-round, but this wind was the kind that ushers in a full-blown front from Canada, perhaps just to remind us that cold weather is going to be the boss around here for a while. No matter how surprising our mild winter has been so far, this kind of wind tells us not to expect many more warm days over the next few months.
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SIDELINES: Good for even a traditional Classic buff
Lights down, tree out, another year gone at the Classic.
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THE OFF SEASON: The more things change, the more they keep changing
I must have had at least a dozen people ask at my son’s wedding a few weeks ago whether I cried, or “how I was handling losing him.” I think they all knew just how tight I am with my two kids, and thought I must have come completely unglued when it finally hit me that he was on his own for good, that the rules had changed nearly as much in my life when he said ,“I do,” as they did for him.
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Lunsford signing new book at Brazil Coffee Grounds
Parke County writer Mike Lunsford will be signing his latest book, “A Place Near Home” (Shade Tree Press; $15) from 10:30 a.m. to 1 p.m. Saturday at Coffee Grounds, Bakery and Coffee Shop in Brazil.
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MIKE LUNSFORD: In the neighborhood with the ‘fantastic’ Mr. Fox
As we drove home late one night last week, my wife and I, both a bit drowsy and anxious for a warm bed and a long nap, were surprised to see a red fox as it darted across the road. He made his appearance in a flash — just a bit of nose and fur and bushy tail — as he jumped out of a ditch in front of our car and was caught in the glare of our headlights on his way to the relative safety of an apple orchard.
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MIKE LUNSFORD: The lizard wore long johns, and other Halloween tales
We stocked our house with a supply of Halloween candy last week; Joanie and I stopped into the new dollar store in town and filled a grocery cart with Butterfingers and Baby Ruths and Three Musketeers bars. Every aromatic bit of it has been calling to me from the orange-and-black baskets we keep on a living room trunk ever since.
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MIKE LUNSFORD: Here’s to the simple beauty of an untended garden…
I can hear a combine eating its way across a nearby cornfield as I write this on a Saturday evening. It is a sound that signals the end of one season and the beginning of anot
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The Off Season: Listening to Mozart is a ‘purr-fect’ way to relax
Regardless of what some people may believe, classical music fans are not snobs. They come from all walks of life, fall into all income brackets, and they’re not required to understand or analyze anything to which they’re listening; they just need to enjoy themselves.
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MIKE LUNSFORD: Fall’s arrival heralded in ever-present fencerows
As much as I hate summer to leave us, I am happy that fall is just around the corner. It has been a bone-dry season, one in which I’ve watched my yard bake and crack like an old pie crust. My wife and I are still spending our evenings going about the business of watering flowers, standing with a dribbling hose in our hands, optimistically hoping that our drought will be broken because we’ve tempted the weather fates to do us one better and give us a good rain.
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MIKE LUNSFORD: The value of hard work goes well beyond a paycheck
Years ago, I used to drive into Rosedale to get my workday started with a big cup of black coffee. Every morning, Monday through Friday, until the town grocery store’s business dried up and blew away, you could have found me slipping through a back door — left unlocked for the early birds — of the old Red and White, 15 minutes before it opened for official business.
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MIKE LUNSFORD: Life’s little conveniences actually can be quite annoying
I am aware that much of the language I use is outdated, stodgy, old-fashioned; I apologize.
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The Off Season: Another sad passing: One-time trendsetter can’t keep up
I wandered into the local mall bookstore the other day. My wife and I had come to town with a list of chores to do and things to buy, but whenever we venture anywhere near a place with book shelves and sales tables and racks of paperbacks, we’re attracted to the scent of ink and the sight of book covers like bees to clover .
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MIKE LUNSFORD: Overheated in Hobart and other vacation tales…
My family climbed into our van and headed to Michigan a few weeks ago, just as we do every other year or so, to stay on the great lake there, for we have come to love its cool breezes and blue water and lighthouses.
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MIKE LUNSFORD: Silence is wonderful, as long as you don’t take it too far
I have visited this topic — how it is often only through inconvenience that we come to appreciate the comforts we have in life — before.
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MIKE LUNSFORD: His tolerance for insects ends with sawyer beetles
As I sloshed a can of water over a pot of red petunias a Sunday morning ago, I saw a pine sawyer beetle make its way slowly up the vinyl siding near my front door. I swatted it to the concrete, and smashed it with my shoe … with impunity, I might add.
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MIKE LUNSFORD: Storm damage makes you appreciate home
My wife and I hadn’t been into town for a good while when we drove in from our place to visit her doctor and my favorite hardware store last week.
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Paying respect in more way than one way…
It has become a habit of mine on Mother’s Day to go to Rosedale Cemetery and lay a few irises on my mom’s grave.
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The Off Season: On the trail with Max the Mushroom Cat
The wet weather and a busy calendar have kept my wife and me from doing what we’ve really wanted to do for a while. Ever since the thermometer began to stay consistently above 40 and the grass started to green, we’ve wanted to get outside, get some sun on our arms, and get down to the wetlands to watch the geese make their landings with a flourish and a honk.
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THE OFF SEASON: So much to do; so little time…
My wife’s aunt, Martha Jean McCarthy, passed away earlier this month; she was 85 years old. Martha Jean was kind and generous and busy her entire life.
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MIKE LUNSFORD: A lesson plan for public schools
I am an advocate of public education; I pull no punches about that. I have taught in public schools for 32 years, and I think it is an inherently American institution.
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THE OFF SEASON: Craning to see elegance in flight
Just before midnight last night, spring officially slipped quietly into our back yards, but I doubt that any of us noticed it much this morning as we slurped our coffee or downed our eggs over this newspaper.
- More Mike Lunsford Headlines
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