Happy Raindrops

A rainy day with Sandhill cranes. Not really. Rain fell all day Saturday while thousands of folks searched the fields for the birds. Thousands of cranes flew around wondering, I am sure, why all the school buses and cars were creeping along the gravel roads beside their corn fields. The birds talked in their peculiar clacking way, settling down to feed, not particularly disturbed with the mechanical traffic, nor mammals either. Calves smelled and moved toward the sticks that landed and walked among them. The huge wings lifted and flapped and settled down a few feet away.
I must admit those birds I viewed were nearly a quarter of a mile away so in my perspective I do not call that seeing Sandhill cranes. But never mind. I enjoyed the festival from the basketball court in Taggares Gymasium in Othello dry and comfortable getting first hand scientific information about birds. The main speakers navigated toward woodpeckers, where they lived (everywhere it seems), and who were the beneficiaries. Owls got the best of them because they had woodpecker holes in which to nest. Cool, huh? Very warm and cozy!
Totally unrelated to cranes was the information on Bretz and his meticulous study of the scablands resulting from the Missoula floods. That book and “Woodpeckers and Owls” will reside on the book shelf at McNary National Wildlife Refuge Education Center with personalized signatures of the authors. Other presentations were given all day long as well as bus tours into the surrounding territory. I left the bunkhouse of the Columbia NWR at 0800 driving in the rain all the way to Pasco. I reflect on cranes and their lives and habitat but will not have to bring that up at McNary. Cranes just do not stop at my Refuge.

Naomi Sherer