San Francisco Chronicle - (Sunday)
Annual festival celebrates majestic sandhill cranes
“The crane festival is a great place to come and learn what makes sandhill cranes such unique and spectacular birds: their size, their behaviors, their fidelity, the distances that they travel.”
Ken Nieland, president of the Lodi Sandhill Crane Association
It’s dawn near Lodi, and bird lovers are overlooking a marsh just two miles west of Interstate 5 as majestic sandhill cranes begin to stir.Mist rises from the Woodbridge Ecological Reserve as the cranes sing their songs, a heralding, trilling sound that wakes up the world.
This herd — yes, a group of cranes is called a herd, not a flock, because they’re so big — is a miracle and not just for the beauty of the scarlet-crowned birds. By the 1930s, sandhill cranes were down to just five breeding pairs in California; today, thanks to conservation efforts, they number in the tens of thousands.
The Lodi Sandhill Crane Festival, in its 25th year, celebrates these statuesque birds and their remarkable comeback with exhibits, presentations and workshops. Held Nov. 3-5 at Hutchins Street Square, admission is free.
“The crane festival is a great place to come and learn what makes sandhill cranes such unique and spectacular birds: their size, their behaviors, their fidelity, the distances that they travel,” said Ken Nieland, president of the Lodi Sandhill Crane Association and a retired zookeeper. “Some of these cranes arrive in Lodi after spending the spring and summer nesting and raising young as far away as Siberia.”
The festival’s keynote speaker this year is George Archibald, co-founder of the International
Crane Foundation. An art and photography show will have paintings and images for sales. The many activities for kids include lessons in making origami cranes.
Naturalist-led tours to nearby places where cranes congregate require a fee. Most tours are at dawn or dusk.
“There’s little that can compare
to the visual and auditory excitement of going out and seeing the cranes flying off in the morning or returning during the evening around sunset when they can be seen in huge numbers: hundreds, thousands in some cases,” Nieland said. “It’s one of nature’s natural wonders.”
Anyone can see cranes in habitats,
such as the Woodbridge preserve, whenever the birds are present, typically from September to February, he said, but the festival’s tours often sell out because the naturalists are so knowledgeable.
Cranes, known for their ecstatic dances, mate for life. The greater sandhill crane has a wingspan of up to 6 feet and can reach nearly 5 feet in height. Too large to roost in trees, cranes overnight in marshes because they can hear the sloshing of approaching predators, such as coyotes, making it easier to flee.
Most people, after visiting the crane festival and witnessing the charismatic birds in the wild, become crane enthusiasts.
Or as they call them in Lodi, “craniacs.”