Party time for the sandhill crane is festival time in Othello
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Picture thousands of libidinous teenagers dancing and leaping to riotous rock music.
It's a good analogy for the noisy spectacle going on in farmers' fields around Othello, a small town in Eastern Washington, about a three-hour drive from Seattle.
This time of year, sandhill cranes outnumber people as they descend en masse for springtime stopovers on their flight path between California's San Joaquin Valley, where the cranes winter, and their breeding grounds in south-central Alaska.
In honor of the big, boisterous birds, Othello citizens are gearing up for their annual Sandhill Crane Festival this weekend.
Sandhills haven't always come to town. The area around Othello, in Adams County, was originally dry, sagebrush steppe land. Then, in the 1950s, engineers used channels carved by a retreating glacier centuries ago to develop the Columbia Basin Irrigation Project. Water from the Grand Coulee Dam flowed into the area, giving birth to a rich agricultural region where corn, wheat, alfalfa, barley and other crops could be grown.
Sometime in the 1970s, a few sandhill cranes discovered Othello, said Dick Erickson, the festival committee chairman who also manages the eastern section of the irrigation project. Word - or trumpet call - apparently spread and now upward of 25,000 cranes make pit stops between mid-February and mid-April, with populations peaking near the end of March. The birds feed on waste grains left over from the fall harvest, along with worms, bugs, mice and other small creatures.
The carbohydrates give them energy for the 1,000-plus-mile journey to Alaska, while small animals provide much-needed protein, especially for egg-laying females, according to Randy Hill, a U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service biologist.
Hill, who works at the 23,000-acre Columbia National Wildlife Refuge north and west of Othello, says the sandhills are entertaining to watch. They're big birds, standing 31/2- to 4-feet tall with 6- to 7-foot wing spans. And they're gregarious! They gather in the hundreds for group dances, jumping up and down with their wings spread and trumpeting in unison.
"It's their way of finding mates, and it's not that different from humans at a rock concert," joked Steve Mlodinow, an Everett physician and author of several bird books. "A male and female will catch each other's eyes and go dance together. It kind of looks and sounds like a frat party."
Sandhill cranes mate for life. For older birds, the springtime ritual is important for re-establishing bonds while first-year cranes get a chance to check out their mating options, Mlodinow said.
Migrating in flocks that can number anywhere from a dozen to 1,000, groups of cranes can be seen flying in big circles. The motion enables them to ride up on thermals, pockets of warm air rising from the ground, said Hill, the biologist.
"They catch the thermals to raise themselves up in elevation, and once they get to a certain height, they don't have to flap their wings," he explained. "They can travel that way for great distances."
Unlike Canada geese that are a source of human irritation, cranes are welcomed by area farmers, Hill said. Not only do they clean fields of crop residue, reducing the likelihood of volunteer plants - say, germinating corn sprouts from the previous year in a field that's to be planted with wheat - but cranes also add nitrogen to the soil through their droppings.
Of the six sandhill subspecies, three have been seen passing through Othello. The bulk of them are lesser sandhill cranes with pockets of greater sandhills (so named because they're a bit taller than the "lesser" cranes) and a few Canadian sandhill cranes that generally migrate up the eastern side of the Rocky Mountains. The greater sandhill cranes breed mostly in California and Oregon, but about 15 pairs come to Washington and are considered an endangered species in this state, according to Hill. The other three sandhill species, nonmigratory natives of Cuba, Florida and Mississippi, are all on the federal endangered-species list, he said.
The best time to view the cranes, Hill says, is in the morning and late afternoon, because they roost after a morning meal in the fields and then come back for a second feeding before dusk.
Crane-viewing tour buses are quickly filling up, said Erickson, who suggests preregistering to secure a seat. There's also a geology tour planned along with other bird-watching tours, some to view sage grouse and others to see waterfowl, he said. At Othello High School, a weekend-long wildlife lecture series is scheduled along with children's activities. There's also a banquet and wildlife art auction Saturday night.
Although cranes now passing through Othello will stop in on their return trip, there will be fewer of them and they won't stay as long, said Hill.
"We're part of that annual cycle," he said. "When we see the cranes, it's a sure of sign of spring - and of fall."
IF YOU GO Othello is about 180 miles east of downtown Seattle and 25 miles south of Moses Lake. Take Interstate 90 East to Vantage, and on the east side of the Columbia River take Highway 26 East, driving approximately 40 miles to Othello.
Friday tours begin at the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service Office at 735 E. Main St. All other tours and activities will be at Othello High School, 340 S. Seventh St., two blocks south of Main Street.
For more information or to register for tours, call the Othello Chamber of Commerce, 509-488-2683 or go to www.othello-wa.com and click on the Sandhill Crane Festival link.
There are only two motels in Othello: Best Western Inn, 509-488-5671, and the Cabana Motel, 509-488-2605. Mar Don Resort, located 17 miles north of Othello, has motel rooms along with tent and RV camping: call 509-346-2651 or visit www.mardonresort.com. Pothole State Park, about one mile west of Mar Don, also has camping facilities: 509-346-2759.