I'm sitting in my van at Necedah National Wildlife Refuge in Wisconsin yesterday, watching geese and swans, for lack of something more interesting to watch. A Whooping Crane walks into distant view. Hey, walk this way. It does, and soon is joined by a pair of cranes that fly in, calling as they arrive. I watch them forage with half a dozen Sandhill Cranes. They wander around, poking those long bills into the wet grass. They disappear behind some willows. They reappear. I've been here for two hours now, and have a handful of pretty much crummy photos of these birds at a distance. Necedah, by the way, is summer home to the Eastern Flock of Whooping Cranes, the flock that's been under construction for 10 years now. There are 96 cranes in the flock, many but not all of them at this refuge. The refuge manager earlier in the day -- I'm here to visit with him -- took me into some refuge sites closed to the public, to look for cranes. We saw four. Now, I've got three within 200 feet of me as I sit quietly in my van, camera now beginning to heat up. Necedah's about a three-hour drive from the Twin Cities, east on I-94. I was on a refuge road that cuts north between what are called Goose Pond and Sprague Pond. The cranes, probable residents at the refuge for another month, were at the north end of Sprague. The three Whoopers eventually walk along a creek that parallels the road I'm on, due east of me. The rule is no feet on the ground when within sight of cranes. Keep a distance. Be invisible. The birds are not to become accustomed in any degree to humans. They're now jabbing bills into creek-side mud, without much apparent success. Me, on the other, hand, I've got success, dumb-lucky this day, quiet in the van, only the finger on the camera's shutter release moving. The camera clicks onto image number 823. Here's a photo numbered somewhere in the high 700s. (LOVE digital!)
