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…
