Dance of the Sandhills

All photos by Jonathan Schechter 
Sandhill Cranes, August 31, 2011
 Brandon Township, Michigan

I often hear their mystical primordial sounding musical call at dawn.
But seldom do I see them. 
 Today I had both treats of the wilder side of nature.

A pair of sandhill cranes with their full grown flight-tested young danced about in my neighbor's
 fallow field just before 6 pm. (The pictures were all from my car parked roadside.) But the dance
 of walk and stalk and leap I witnessed was not a dance of pleasure.
It was a dance of survival for the cranes and a death dance for crunchy grasshoppers 
 and perhaps some juicy meadow voles as well.
Each field dance ended with a grab or stab.
A diet rich in protein is essential for the great task that looms ahead: Migration!
And these birds know that their time to fly will be soon.