One March Day on the Platte

5:50 a.m.

The Platte runs dark and shallow past the blind at Rowe Sanctuary. The water is a black sheet in the bottom of the valley, braided around sandbars that show only as a paler dark. Frost has laid a white edge on the grass along the bank, and the blind holds the cold of the night. From out on the river the first calls come, a rolling hoarse note, the sound of a hinge rusted all winter. It is too dark to see the birds. They stand out there in the shallows, hundreds of thousands of them, heads tucked into their chest feathers. The calls multiply, then die back, then multiply again. The braids break the sound and scatter it, so the dark seems to be talking from several places at once. No wind yet. The Platte moves dark water past the blind.

7:10 a.m.

Gray light comes up off the valley floor. The sandbars appear first, then the birds standing on them, long lines of gray in the gray water, heads up. The water between the bars goes from black to gunmetal. The calls sharpen into a steady rolling racket. A flock at the head of the bar begins to jump: wings down, necks stretched, and then the whole line is in the air, clearing the water by a few feet before it climbs. Others follow from every bar. The air fills with the dry clatter of many wings. The sky fills with lines and long Vs, all climbing in silence now, the bugling left behind on the water. The last birds lift off the downstream bar, and the sound of the roost goes with them. The Platte steams where the birds stood.

8:40 a.m.

Sun is over the far bank. The river is empty. The sandbars lie bare, ribbed with the tracks of the roost, thousands of three-toed prints packed into the wet sand. The water runs around them, free of birds. Away from the river, out across the flat fields, the cranes have spread out to feed. They walk through the corn stubble in loose companies, picking, lifting their heads, picking again. Some companies are small; some spread across a whole field. The calls from the fields reach the river as a thin distant rattle. The wind comes up off the ground and carries a few dry leaves. The Platte, empty, slides east past bars of bare sand.

11:20 a.m.

Out in the stubble a pair of cranes is dancing. They bow to each other, jump, throw a piece of cornstalk into the air, and bow again, then both go still, watching the horizon. Near them a whole field of birds feeds without looking up. The dust of the fields hangs in the wind. Every so often the whole flock rises at once into a gray cloud, circles twice, and settles in the next field over, a little farther out. The dropped stalks come down after them. The wind keeps coming, steady out of the west, bending the dry grass along the fence lines. Far off, a tractor works a field, and the cranes pay it no mind. Where the flock has passed, the broken stubble is flattened in a wide gray patch.

2:10 p.m.

The light has the flat glare of afternoon. Most of the cranes have stopped feeding. They stand in the stubble, resting in the open. A bald eagle crosses the sky, high and dark, and every head in the field comes up at once. The eagle passes without turning, its shadow crossing the stubble, and the heads go back down. On the river, a few cranes have come back early and stand on a sandbar, preening. A coyote moves along the far bank, keeping to the cottonwoods, and the cranes on the bar walk out into the water until the coyote has gone on past. Its tracks lie in the mud along the bank.

5:30 p.m.

The light goes long and the wind drops. The cranes come up out of the fields in long strings, all moving toward the river at once, not hurrying but steady, calling. The sky fills with them. The strings cross the whole valley at once. They cross the river in lines, pass over, bank, and come down on the far side, out of sight, and more keep coming. At the water's edge below the blind, other cranes are already standing in the shallows, looking upstream. The sandbars grow dark with birds. The shadows of the cottonwoods lie across the Platte's braids.

7:00 p.m.

Dusk comes up from the east. The cranes are coming in to roost now in great waves, flocks of hundreds dropping out of the sky onto the bars, legs down, wings back, calling as they land. The river fills. The waters between the bars stand thick with birds, and the bars themselves go under the flocks as they land. The late arrivals circle the roost once and drop in wherever a space is open. The calling gentles into a low continuous sound, like a wind through a fence. The sandbars have disappeared under the birds.

8:00 p.m.

Full dark. The roost has settled into a mutter, a low constant sound of thousands of birds talking low, the sound the river itself might make if it had a voice. The shapes on the water are barely shapes. The cold comes back across the valley, moving the cottonwood leaves. The blind is a dark box on the dark bank. Far off, a dog barks once and stops. The river keeps running under the sound, over its sandbars and around its islands, past the standing birds. In the dark the Platte drains east toward the Missouri.

Rowe Sanctuary