Community Corner

Calling All Cranes—Stand Up and Be Counted

Lake and McHenry county volunteers help track distribution of Sandhill Cranes in Illinois.

Citizen volunteers in Lake and McHenry counties will wake early Saturday morning to participate in the Midwest Crane Count, one of the largest citizen-based wildlife surveys in the world.

Thousands of observers in six Midwest states will watch for cranes and listen for their calls in nature preserves and on private land.

The Midwest Crane Count started in 1976 in Columbia County, WI, and over the years spread throughout the state, eventually expanding into neighboring states. The crane count came to Illinois in 1995.

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“There are limitations of citizen science, but it does work exceedingly well to track trends over time,” said Ann Lacy, long-term crane research coordinator for the International Crane Foundation (ICF), based in Baraboo, WI.

“As an education tool, it is priceless giving people feeling they are participating in saving cranes, that they are part of something larger,” Lacy said.

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In an attempt to keep the data as consistent as possible, all volunteers will watch for cranes from 5:30 a.m. to 7:30 a.m. in Illinois, Wisconsin, Indiana, Michigan, Minnesota and Iowa.

“Cranes tend to be active in the morning, defending territories and sitting on nests. They are very vocal. Often during the count, you won’t see them, but you will hear them,” Lacy said.

“You may see one fly over and all the other territories will call out like dogs in a neighborhood,” Lacy said. They are distinguishable, in flight, because their legs trail behind them. The cranes have distinctive and memorable vocalizations.

Sandhill cranes are one of the oldest bird species in existence. A 10 million-year-old crane fossil was discovered in Nebraska that is structurally identical to the modern crane, according to the ICF.

Sandhill cranes were once abundant in northern and central Illinois, but became rare by the 1800s, according to a report published by the Illinois Endangered Protection Board in 2004. In 1995, the sandhill crane was determined to be a threatened species in Illinois.

The sandhill cranes are making a recovery in Illinois and the species was delisted as a threatened species in 2009.

“The delisting is related to wetland conservation and hunting restrictions. They have also found the cranes are adapting more to human presence, I have more and more people contacting me now about cranes they watch at work or in their neighborhoods,” said Cindy Rendl, crane count coordinator for Lake County.

In 2010, crane count, volunteers counted nearly 300 cranes in Illinois. Across the Midwest, 2,496 counters observed 11,751 sandhill cranes, with the largest concentration in central Wisconsin, according to the International Crane Foundation Web site.

In Lake County, volunteers will be stationed at every site where cranes have been spotted in the past, Rendl said. She expects about 100 counters, a significant increase from last year’s 65.

Volunteers are trained not only to count the cranes, but also to record whether the cranes are mated.

“They are nesting right now, so the idea is to observe them doing courtship behavior, calling back and forth. They will do dancing and fluffing up their feathers,” Rendl said.

Mark Guth, a Mundelein resident, has participated in the crane count every year for more than a decade at Volo Bog. He, his wife, Mary Ellen, and friend, Jane Easterly, look forward to the event.

“I love doing it. I’m a morning person anyway and it’s always exciting not knowing what you’re going to see,” Guth said. While watching for cranes, they also spot many other bird species in biologically rich Volo Bog.

“Last year was one of the nicest, because we got really close to six cranes. They were just strolling along, not bothered by us,” he said.

Stacy Iwanicki, natural resources educator at Volo Bog and crane count coordinator for McHenry Audubon, said there will be about 40 counters in McHenry County.

Iwanicki said most of the crane watching areas in McHenry County are in the eastern part of the county, including Moraine Hills State Park and Glacial Park.

Some of the best spots in Lake County are Chain of Lakes State Park, Rollins Savanna and Volo Bog.

While counters will only be on the lookout for sandhill cranes, the endangered species whooping crane has been spotted in the area, but not during the crane count. A flock of whooping cranes, which is the largest flying bird in North America, stopped during migration in Glacial Park, near Richmond, in 2006.

In 2008, three whooping cranes stopped in Middlefork Savannah near Lake Forest for a couple of days.

“They actually had to close the forest preserve for a day,” said Rendl, recalling the Middlefork incident. “They didn’t want them to be impacted or steered off their path.”


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