COLUMN: Sandhill cranes, longtime inspiration for humans, face avian flu threat

Our appreciation of cranes grows with the slow unraveling of earthly history.  His tribe, we now know, stems out of the remote Eocene.  The other members of the fauna in which he originated are long since entombed within the hills.  When we hear his call we hear no mere bird.  We hear the trumpet in the orchestra of evolution.

Aldo Leopold, “Marshland Elegy”

The sandhill crane is extraordinary.  It is the tallest wild bird in Oregon. There are over a dozen crane species on Earth, and the sandhill is most numerous. Yet there are fewer than a million alive.

The sandhill’s voice is one of the loudest of all birds, carrying for miles. The bugling call is created along a tracheal tube coiling up and down the bird’s long neck. 

Territorial and courtship dances of cranes may be where our ancestors got the inspired to dance. As Leopold hints above, the crane family is the oldest surviving bird family, starting 55 million years ago. 

Sandhill cranes are hunted in many states. They are not legally hunted in Washington, Oregon, California and Nebraska.

Now sandhill cranes are migrating northward.  Beyond power lines, transmission towers, and fatigue, they face avian flu. At least twenty cranes are known to have died of the flu last October in Harney County. Indiana and Kentucky have reported die-offs recently.

Cranes are drawn to marshes, habitat ideal for avian flu virus to spread and survive.  Like waterfowl and their predators, cranes will be liable to catch this viral infection, usually fatal for birds. Peregrine falcons often prey on ducks. Flu deaths have been confirmed for peregrines, perhaps including a widely celebrated pair that nested on the UC Berkeley campus.   Avian flu has also killed a variety of mammals. Oregon Fish and wildlife warns: “The HPAI (avian flu) virus is potentially present in any Oregon water source that waterfowl frequent.”

Migrating cranes stop over at Sauvie Island.  Sauvie and Ridgefield Wildlife Refuge also share a wintering population. Sauvie Island has the only regular wintering crane population in Oregon. So far, there has been no evidence of flu deaths among those cranes.

There are no recent records of cranes stopping at Ankeny or Baskett Slough Refuges. There are scattered areas of Oregon where cranes normally nest. This has been a wet winter. Drought conditions are gone, so Oregon cranes will likely lay eggs this spring.  Some Cascade meadows, Klamath Basin, Summer Lake, and Malheur Wildlife Refuge have wetlands where sandhills return each spring for breeding.    

As many as 20,000 sandhill cranes winter in California. They migrate to or across Oregon in late winter into spring.

For more information

Sandhill bugling: https://www.allaboutbirds.org/guide/Sandhill_Crane/sounds
International Crane Foundation: https://savingcranes.org/

Avian flu information:   https://www.aphis.usda.gov/livestock-poultry-disease/avian/avian-influenza/hpai-detections/wild-birds

Peregrines:  https://www.mercurynews.com/2025/02/27/berkeley-peregrine-falcons-disappearance-northern-california/

For information about upcoming Salem Audubon programs and activities, see www.salemaudubon.org, or Salem Audubon’s Facebook page.

Harry Fuller is an Oregon birder and natural history author of “Freeway Birding” and the newly-published “Birding Harney County.” He is a member of the Salem Audubon Society. Contact him at [email protected] or atowhee.blog. His “Some Fascinating Things About Birds” column appears regularly in Salem Reporter.

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