On Friday, Dec. 6, I was toiling away in my home office. Suddenly, over the mild cacophony of various feeder birds out back, I heard the faint guttural rattling of sandhill cranes .
In a flash, I shot out into the backyard to see a flock of 33 of the giant birds tracing lazy circles high in the ether.
As if to give me a show, the cranes circled ever closer, issuing primeval cries, until they were nearly overhead. A new bird for my Worthington home’s yard list. But that’s trivial in the bigger picture.
A sedge (the term for a flock) of cranes is a spectacular bit of wildness come to the suburbs, even if only fleetingly. Uninitiated people may see these flocks and wonder if pterodactyls have returned from the Mesozoic Era.
An adult sandhill crane stands about 4 feet tall, sports a 6-foot wingspan and weighs up to 12 pounds. The huge birds suggest herons but are distant relatives of that group. They, perhaps surprisingly, are closely related to coots and rails.