Holly Seitz crouches in the tall grass. Her fingers search the dirt, clasping a stick. Then she leaps. She flies high into the air, with elbows and knees jutting out. She tosses the stick as she jumps. A second later, from out of the grass, a bird leaps up in perfect mimicry with half-bent wings, launching grass and twigs from under its scrambling feet.
This, then, is the way cranes dance. Their dance is part of the way they bond as a couple, Seitz explains. They dance, not just during mating season, and not just when they first meet. They dance throughout the year.Cranes mate for life. Which is not to say they don't date a bit, Seitz says, before they settle down. When they are young they might spend a season dancing with another bird, but then, if no magic happens, if that couple doesn't produce an egg, they seem to recognize it is time to move on.
Eventually every crane finds the right he or she. Then they spend their lives singing duets and dancing their wild, flapping tangos.
The dance is not only a way to bond, it is also a way to stake out a territory. Except when they congregate to begin a migration, cranes live as couples on their own plot of land. The choreography of their dance incorporates every defense mechanism they know. They click their beaks and flap and throw sticks - all of which can be quite startling to an interloper. Some cranes also have the ability to engorge a fleshy patch on their heads, turning their skin from pale to bright scary red. So those who can, dance red-faced.
A biologist, Seitz came to Salt Lake City a year ago to take a job with the Tracy Aviary. Before that she'd had a series of internships in Wisconsin, where all 15 species of the world's cranes are being bred and preserved at the headquarters of the International Crane Foundation.
The Crane Foundation is private and nonprofit, Seitz explains. It is more well-known in Europe than in the United States, although our federal government gives it some funds because Crane Foundation scientists are the ones breeding and reintroducing the almost-extinct U.S. whooping cranes.
With the blessing of her Tracy Aviary bosses, Seitz still maintains a close relationship with the foundation, occasionally visiting sites where whooping crane research is going on. She's been to Idaho twice this summer, to the ranch of Kent Clegg. Clegg is raising seven whooping cranes, along with a number of nonendangered sandhill cranes.
He's been experimenting for two years with the sandhills, teaching them how to migrate. In October, Clegg will incorporate the whooping cranes into the migration. They'll follow him, in his ultralight plane, on an 800-mile flight to the Bosque del Apache National Wildlife Refuge in New Mexico. If he is successful, as he has been with sandhills, the whoopers will return by themselves to Idaho, next spring.
Cranes raised by humans are imprinted to follow human behavior, Seitz explains. The Idaho cranes would never learn to migrate unless the human who raised them teaches them how.
Seitz knows something about crane behavior. In 1994, she spent six months acting like a crane herself.
The internship at the Crane Foundation was a spectacular experience, she says. She didn't get paid much - $250 a month plus housing - but she did perhaps the most important work she'll ever do. She acted like as a crane mother to whooping cranes. Today, the chicks she raised are living in a flock in Florida, joining birds who were raised by their own parents, and surviving in the wilds on their own.
During her internship, she spent her days just hanging out with the birds, she says. She wore a billowy costume, a garb to cover her face and disguise her human shape. While she was not exactly shaped like a crane, she was all-white with a bit of black on her arms in the same spot a whooper's wings are black.
She'd dig around in the ground for food. And the baby birds would dig with her. Sometimes she'd bring in some of the bugs and seeds the birds could expect to find in Florida. Then she'd pretend to find them. She stocked the pond with minnows and taught the babies to fish.
Not that they needed much teaching. Grubbing in the dirt and pecking at a flash in the water is instinctual, she says. She just helped the cranes capitalize on their instincts.
Using a little crane-head puppet, she also taught them about predators. She'd scan the sky for hawks and scan the brush for bobcats. Seeing something, she'd stick her puppet head in the air. The babies' heads would pop up and see what she saw. Then together they'd scurry for the safety of the pond.
She would dance but never speak. She carried a tape recorder to play the sounds of an adult bird. All in all it was a serene and beautiful experience, Seitz says. "Although I lost a lot of people skills during that time."
In the early 1990s, when she first graduated from college and began her work at the Crane Foundation, only seven of the world's 15 species were endangered. Today 13 species are endangered.
Loss of habitat is the reason for the lost of cranes. The work of the International Crane Foundation's captive breeding programs is vital, she says. As is education. Using the whooping cranes as an example of what can be done, Seitz explains that during the 1940s there were fewer than 20 adults left in the wild. Today, there are nearly 300 whoopers. Half live in nonmigratory colonies in Florida and New Mexico. The other half migrate, from Canada to Texas.
The Crane Foundation's goal is to establish one more migratory flock - for a total of four separate flocks - in order to best protect the species from being wiped out by disease or natural disaster. Currently foundation scientists are working to preserve habitat and gain permits and map out a migratory route on the East Coast.
And why are so many people going to so much trouble for cranes? Cranes hold a special place in many cultures, says Seitz. They capture the imagination because they are so large (as tall as 5 feet with a wing span up to 71/2 feet) and because there is at least one species of crane indigenous to almost every continent.
In Africa, the crowned cranes are a symbol of luck. In southern Asia, it is the sarus cranes that are lucky. In Japan, a likeness of a crane is embroidered on a marriage kimono. It seems a fitting symbol for a wedding. What more could a couple hope for than to be like the cranes, devoted partners in the dance of life?
Meanwhile, at the Tracy Aviary, death came early to the male in the pair of sandhill cranes. He died when he was just over 20 years old, an age not unusual in the wilds. However, in captivity, cranes can live to be 65.
The female sandhill crane has been alone for two years now. Since coming to the aviary, Seitz has been working on finding her a mate. The Crane Foundation's genetics research and careful tracking of individual birds assures Seitz of finding her a male she's not related to, someone she can bond with and have chicks with.
Seitz thinks she'll have a mate for the female sandhill sometime within the year. In the meantime, Seitz enters her pen every day to feed her and care for her. And the woman will sometimes invite the crane to dance.