Dan's Feathursday Feature: Sandhill Crane

When I hear the Sandhill Crane flying high overhead, I think of arrowheads.

I think of the native American arrow and spear points that I found in the fields of central Ohio many years ago.

This white one is probably 250-350 years old. I think of the last person who touched this piece of fashioned flint before I picked it up from a furrow in a spring field. I imagine that person sitting cross-legged, reworking the edge to repair some damage. As he works, he hears the Sandhill Crane high overhead, and he knows snow will come soon.

This other point here, the large black one, may date back as far as 4000 B.C.E. It was a thrill to find it, and still today it raises goose bumps when I hold it. I think of the last person who held it. It was a late winter morning, I’m sure. Winter dragged on and there was worry that spring would never come. No one had yet heard those mysterious calls from on high that brought warmer weather. Then suddenly several women came running--laughing, and shouting that they had heard the Sandhill Crane. He heard it, too, and he smiled as he fingered the arrowhead. The cranes will never let us down, he thought. Thanks to their arrival, we know that the trees will once again clothe themselves in green, and life will return. And he sat back down to re-tie the point to its shaft, and prepare for a hunt.

Forgive my arrogance, but I claim the prior owners of these arrowheads as my ancestors, for I feel they have passed on to me their family escutcheon. Thousands of years of history are here in the palm of my hand. And with these flint points, I dare to say that I have inherited also the spirit of their prior owners. I hear the raucous squawk of the Sandhill Crane—hundreds flying high over Chicago’s south side—and I am drunk on the adrenalin.

As it has done for thousands of years, each fall and spring the Sandhill Crane continues to reenact the ritual of death and recreation. As my ancestors did for thousands of years, I look skyward and give thanks. I invite you to do the same.

Dan's Feathursday Feature is a weekly contribution to the COS blog featuring the thoughts, insights and pictures of Chicago birder, Dan Lory on birds of the Chicago region.