Cranes...

Friday I was included on an outing for some volunteers who work with visitors here at the center. We drove south about an hour to a place called Somerset Levels, an old river valley now a drained peat marsh. Last August, 21 cranes, that had been reared (at Slimbridge) from eggs collected in Germany, were released here. Cranes disappeared in England over 400years ago as the result of hunting and habitat destruction.

We walked across the farm where there is a blind from which we hoped to see some birds. At first there were none in sight, though a group on Monday had gotten a good view of them. Then someone spotted them flying in the distance. All 18 of the surviving birds could be seen in the distance a thousand feet or more over a dirt field. Damon, who is in charge of the Great Crane Project, said he hadn't seen them flying so high before. For the 20 minutes or more that we watched them through binoculars they flew together, staying in the hot air rising over the field. I imagined what it must feel like for them to feel a thermal lifting them higher into the warm spring air and to be able to see all the way to the sea. It was so moving for me to watch, knowing this was the first time cranes had thermaled above the English countryside since about 1550! It was the same emotion I feel seeing nene fly, knowing how close they came to extinction.

They eventually started to descend, flying close enough so that we could faintly hear them calling to one another before they landed in a distant field. Afterwards we visited two other reserves. We got to see a pair of grebes feeding their three young ones and many waterfowl bathing and enjoying an unseasonably warm spring day. Very sublime!