CRANES

Two and half years isn’t nearly enough time to feel the rhythm of a place. Apparently, salmon run and cranes dance in locales but a measley hour from my house. I speak of real, live, honest to god, desparately lunging, red-flanked salmon, and big elegant cranes, from woodblock prints. After discovering these facts, I set out to verify them this weekend. Marin’s Samuel P Taylor State Park is supposedly the place for the fish, but despite swolen streams and expectations, they stood me up. I stalked the Cronin Fish Viewing Area on the advice of some hikers down the road, but in vain. I think I was a few weeks late. Also, they usually make their run a few days after hard rain to take advantage of the high water, and it hadn’t seriously rained in a week. Oh well. Misty redwoods and windy roads are reason enough to drive out there.

Cranes were reported to reside on the opposite side, to the east, in the Central Valley, the Cosumnes River Preserve being especially promising. Headed out with some friends from work, across the delta , through flat fields and marshes, some teeming with ducks and geese and thousands of tundra swans (Cygnus columbianus). The preserve was windy in the extreme, but fairly birdy, even in the middle of the afternoon. Coots and northern shovelers in abundance, pintails, plenty of other ducks I couldn’t ID for lack of a scope (a legitimate excuse!), stilts, egrets, etc. We cut across the rail road tracks on Desmond Dr. and before long we came upon a small flock of cranes! Sandhill cranes, Grus canadensis, exceptionally graceful birds. Slate grey, long straight necks, and red forhead. We even saw some performing courtship dances, I think. At sunset they all returned to the shallow waters to roost, and when I say all I mean hundreds, split into flocks of ten to twenty. They didn’t blacken the sky like flying monkeys or anything, but it was impressive all the same.

I think the most impressive part of the trip was the sheer masses of wintering birds. Hundreds of cranes, thousands of swans and white-fronted geese. As I was driving back and the sun’s last and longest rays receded behind the Coast Ranges before a front of inky blue, waves and waves of birds flew overhead, returning to roost, not in V’s so much as undulating waves, like the edge of an auroral curtain. Can’t beat that olde time religion.