a sedge of cranes

It's a Tuesday, late afternoon. You've been working all day but your family is on fall break and vacation, respectively, a situation that you might have the teeniest bit of resentment about. So what's a middle-aged white lady to do? Well, if that middle-aged white lady is me, the answer is fill your minivan with kids and go see some birds. OK, a lot of birds.

The Jasper-Pulaski Fish & Wildlife Area is about an hour's drive from our house, but we've never been there before. But as you may know, in the past few years we've gotten more and more into bird-watching, and this year we've pretty much completely immersed ourselves in our state's public lands. And here is where the two collide: Jasper-Pulaski is a major spot along the migration route of sandhill cranes. The crane count as of yesterday was 5,495, but the peak isn't until mid-November, when there are more than double that number. Amazing, right?

We picked up Kelsey, Jimmy, and Gracie along the way, and we got there about an hour before sunset, which is when the birds return to the pasture for what might be called a bird happy hour. They kite around in the sky, socialize with each other (loudly!), and generally just hang out before they return to their roosting marshes for the night. They do the same thing in reverse at sunrise, which I hope we get a chance to see in the next few weeks.

As you can tell, Henry was not amused by the proceedings. I'm not sure if that's because he objected to having company, objected to having to be quiet and not scare the cranes away and/or disturb our fellow bird-watchers, or objected to something else entirely. But the rest of us were completely in awe and so so happy that we went. Mike was busy working on his car so he couldn't come this time, but now that we know how neat this is, I can't imagine why we wouldn't go back at least once a year.