WISCONSIN -- The wetland just east of Lake Namakagon was still brown with last year’s dried leaves and swollen with this year’s melted snow as we drove home from a chilly hike in late April. Movement caught our eye, and we peered intently into the late afternoon sunshine. Two sandhill cranes, perfectly camouflaged in the warm browns of the marsh, stood on a spit of sedges and leatherleaf. Their red caps didn’t stand out, but when their eyes caught the sun just right, they glowed orange.
As we watched, one crane and then the other dipped their head down into the thicket of plants, then tossed a twig or long leaf over their shoulder. Over and over they repeated this behavior while we snapped photos. At one point, one of the cranes folded up their stilt-like legs and nestled their belly into the vegetation, their long black beak, red cap, and orange eyes just visible over a small channel of open water. Clearly, they were building a nest. Likely, the sitting bird was the female, helping to mold the pile of weeds into a cozy home.
Although the female shapes the nest and incubates the eggs overnight, the male helps to build the structure and splits incubation duties with her 50/50 during the day. Both parents lose belly feathers to form a brood patch where blood vessels just under bare skin share body heat with the eggs.
Although I often hear their rattling bugle calls echoing across the lake and through my open windows, having cranes nest where I could see them was a new treat. For a few weeks, every warm afternoon found me biking along that stretch of road with my camera at the ready. Each time, the evening sunlight spotlighted the face of a crane on the nest.
Then, I left for a conference in California. When the weather and my schedule finally cooperated again, it had been exactly a month since the nest building. Although I scanned the wetland with high hopes, no cranes were visible. The typical incubation period for cranes is 28-30 days, so it was conceivable that the 1-3 eggs might have hatched. But although the chicks emerge with eyes open and can soon walk and run, there’s little chance they could have already had the strength to travel to another wetland. And although they would have been too small for me to spot among the shrubs, their parents would surely have been visible.
The possible culprits are numerous. Many Beings will eat an egg or a baby bird. Crows, ravens, raptors, foxes, coyotes, raccoons, mink, and great horned owls are all potential predators if they can avoid the kicks and stabs of a defensive parent.
A few days after biking past the empty wetland, I switched vehicles. Paddling through a wide, marshy section of the Namekagon River, we again spotted a pair of sandhill cranes. This time their rusty feathers stood out against the fresh green spikes of horsetail. One stalked through shallow water with eyes focused downward, even dipping their head into the muck for something tasty.
The harsh cries of a red-winged blackbird brought our attention back to the other crane in the taller grass. The red and yellow epaulets on the blackbird’s wings flashed brightly as he dive-bombed the crane and even landed on their broad brown back. The wading crane returned, but there was little they could do except hunker down and point their beaks against the attacks of the smaller bird.
And could you blame him? This one male blackbird may have attracted as many as 15 females to build nests in his territory. While he doesn’t help incubate the eggs like the male crane, he does spend more than a quarter of his daylight hours in territorial defense against his peers and potential predators. And the cranes were potential predators. Although they eat plenty of waste grain from farm fields during migration, throughout the breeding season they seek the protein of small mammals, frogs, and baby birds. The blackbird was right to be leery.
These crane encounters drove home an ecological reality: One Being’s baby is often another’s baby food. The abundance of summer is driven by this necessity. Tender young leaves become caterpillar food. Six thousand caterpillars—who are baby butterflies and moths—become a half-dozen chickadee chicks. Some of those chicks become red squirrel kittens. The squirrels become red fox kits, and so on. How does anything survive?
Red-winged blackbirds can have multiple broods with several eggs over the course of a summer. Even after feeding a few cranes, they are one of the most abundant native birds in North America. At best, a pair of cranes raise no more than one chick per summer, but may have 30 years or more together to produce two successful heirs and replace themselves. Even with some predation, their population is increasing slowly due to habitat protection. There is space enough for all of us.
In the end, we can’t escape the fact that a bit (or a lot) of death goes into every life.
Emily’s award-winning second book, Natural Connections: Dreaming of an Elfin Skimmer, is available to purchase at www.cablemuseum.org/books and at your local independent bookstore, too.
For more than 50 years, the Cable Natural History Museum has served to connect you to the Northwoods. Our Summer Calendar is open for registration! Visit our new exhibit, “Becoming the Northwoods: Akiing (A Special Place). Follow us on Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, and cablemuseum.org to see what we are up to.
Last Update: Jun 04, 2025 9:32 am CDT
