Tag Archive | sandhill cranes

Out and About

I visited a few friends across the mesa today, a big step for me seeing more than one live person in a day much less in a week. I’m grateful for getting out and about. The fields everywhere are knee-high and green; it will be a banner year for the ranchers, and it’s an extraordinary sight. Other fine sights today were the sandhill cranes and their chicks in Garden Buddy’s field, though as soon as I slowed the car to take some pictures the parents shooed the chicks down into the grass. I’ll try again in a few days.

I enjoyed birds and beverages all day at various places, a lovely sparkling water on the west end of the mesa connecting with friends who are moving shortly and who also have nesting phoebes; then iced tea and cookies next door, where these magpies are nesting right next to the house. Back home, after sitting outside for a meditative evening desensitizing my phoebes to my presence on their patio, I came inside to enjoy a raspberrytini. I rolled the glass rim in the last of the homemade raspberry syrup then in Demerara sugar, and mixed the gin with sweet vermouth, garnished of course with fresh raspberries. I’m grateful as always for savoring the simple pleasures; for cultivating contentment rather than discontentment.

Sandhill Cranes

There they are: the first sandhill cranes I’ve heard this season. Their grekking, trekking cry suddenly falls on your ears from thin air, and you look up, seeking the source of the call. You see nothing but sky… and then! Their spiral turns under sun, from invisible silver they flow into a hundred shadows, sound made manifest.

I’m grateful for the first sandhill cranes this season ~ the first I’ve noticed anyway, they may have been flying over for days, but not while I was outside. This afternoon walking up the driveway I heard them, searched the sky ~ and found them, circling slowly, high. I’m grateful each migration season to recognize their unmistakeable ancient traveling call as they soar or circle overhead. One forgets. They pass through, fleeting, for a few weeks each spring and fall, then vanish to their breeding range north of here, or their winter refuge south, and one forgets. But then, out of the blue one afternoon, there it is, that sudden certain signal sound, of spring officially sprung. The sandhill cranes are back!

Years ago, closer. I anticipate many more opportunities to admire them this spring.
I’m grateful this week for little blue Iris reticulata, blooming as the snow melts.