“It’s kind of like going to church,” the birder next to me laughed.  “Amen,” I responded as we laughed at the rows of birders silently waiting for the whooping crane to arrive.  The man had been studiously adjusting his spotting scope.  And the clicks of his equipment were the only sounds to hear on this late-October, Tuesday afternoon.  The benches at the viewing area even looked like church pews.

The man told me that he had raced to the preserve after work in an attempt to add a whooping crane to his life list.  For the previous weeks, the whooping crane had been a regular in the Mud Lake Marsh.  And given the fact that whooping cranes are extremely rare, the excitement was palpable.

As for me, a few minutes of the anticipatory silence were enough.  I stood up, marched down the trail and decided to take a brisk pace down the sanctuary trail.  Haehnle is not an ideal hiking spot.  Most of the terrain is marsh.  And most of it is closed to visitors, given the spot’s importance as a migratory bird staging area.

Still, the place has its charms.  The trail passes along the northeastern shore of Eagle Lake.  Then, it opens into a prairie area.  Finally, the trail loops back to the originial route through a mature forest.  The trail is short - maybe a mile or two.  But it is scenic.

After I returned to the makeshift chapel, I overheard a birder impart an important nugget of information.  “6:20.”  Apparently, the birders had watched the whooping crane so closely that they were aware of the exact moment at which the bird usually arrived for some nighttime marsh fun and frolic.

For whatever reason, I decided to leave prior to 6:20.  I suppose if I were a birder, I’d have waited around.  But the sun was speeding quickly to the horizon.  And I had a sunset to catch.

Here’s a previous post about the Haehnle Memorial Sanctuary:

http://www.blogsmonroe.com/expatriate/?p=304

Note: The map above was taken from the official sanctuary brochure.

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