KEARNEY, Neb. — Just before sunrise, in the heart of the North American continent, the temperature has dipped to 15 degrees on the Platte River.
I’m shivering in a wooden blind, even with layers of fleece and foot warmers to ward off frostbite. It’s late March, and it shouldn’t be this cold — not even for Nebraska’s Great Plains.
Across the frozen landscape, the sun begins its ascent into a blush-colored sky, and slowly on the river dark shapes begin to stand and stretch and flap.
An ancient, natural avian spectacle is about to happen at the Rowe Sanctuary near Kearney. The sandhill cranes are awakening, untold thousands of them, their silhouettes barely visible in the predawn cold.
From the mist, a cacophony of cackles, calls and coos rises with each passing minute.
For the cranes, sunrise brings feeding time, when as many as a half-million birds will rise and fatten up on the waste corn (most of it left over from autumn harvest months earlier) in the fields, open landscapes and pastures of rich, sweet grass before returning to the river at sunset to slumber again.
During feeding time, the cranes will strike poses, bend and preen as they search for a mate for life.
I’m in Nebraska to see the cranes passing through the Platte River Valley during their annual migration from their wintering grounds in Texas and Mexico to Canada and Siberia for the breeding season. I’m in the blind — a shed, really — anticipating the massive breakfast liftoff.
That surreal moment comes sooner than I expect. A pair of scalawag eagles has caused havoc among the birds, and synchronized clouds of blue-gray cranes suddenly lift to the skies in a furious attempt to escape becoming the predator’s next meal.
And, just like that, they are gone for the day, only to return late in the evening — the long stretches of V-shaped columns of birds resembling a never-ending freight train.
About 70,000 cranes zip through the Rowe-Kearney area each night during migration along the Central Flyway, one of four routes across the United States that many birds follow annually.
The birds stay in the Platte River valley for about three or four weeks, consuming enough calories to bulk up about 20 percent of their body weight for the lengthy flight north.
The migration is amazing. The cranes are huge, standing up to 5 feet tall with gray plumage, sporty red caps and serious attitude. Their wingspan easily reaches 6 feet.
Sometimes, whooping cranes visit, as they follow the migration route, too. On another early morning jaunt to see the birds at the Crane Trust, mixed in with the racket of sandhills is the noise of a single-engine airplane.
As the plane comes into sight, Brad Mellema, once director of the Crane Trust Nature and Visitor Center, speaks in a low whisper as to not disturb the jittery birds.
“If it circles,” he says, “that means they’ve sighted a whooping crane.”
I was a bit disappointed as the plane puttered on westward, signaling that the whoopers were nowhere to be found.
“Cranes have been moving up and down this highway for centuries,” says Michael Forsberg, a renowned nature photographer and author. “They’ve seen the rise and fall of civilizations.”
Bird-watchers from around the world flock to the region to see the cranes from late February until April. Peak times, though, are about the last two weeks in March.
To see the wondrous crane occurrence that National Geographic calls the greatest wildlife phenomenon in the United States is remarkable.
“It’s a place where you have to linger,” Forsberg says. “The more you stay here, the more you want to stay. It’s not just a great gathering of birds but a great gathering of people.”