This Morning Outside

by Diane Porter

Oct. 18, 2014
Pheasant Branch Creek Conservancy
Middleton, Wisconsin

My biggest thrill of the weekend at the Bird Watcher's Digest Reader Rendezvous, in Wisconsin, was the sandhill cranes. They grazed in open fields, easy as cows in a pasture. As if they were ordinary.

Their calls sounded like a swamp full of frogs, not what you'd expect from a bird of majesty, but pleasing, amusing and stirring all at once.

Flocks flew overhead with steady flight, though their great chests pumped up and down as if spring loaded. The thrumming of the nature's engine. I felt awe.

© 2014 Diane Porter

—Diane Porter

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