How about something a little different to start your Saturday morning? The other day, on Lake Mendota – the largest of the lakes in Madison, Wisconsin – there were a lot of cranes out and about. I got some video of them calling. This is an urban-y area; if you could see beyond the trees and reeds, you would be looking at downtown Madison across the lake. The cranes don’t seem to mind hanging out in a city of well over 200,000 people, though.

A couple notes on the video: this is where I would normally say something about the calming sound of birds calling. Sandhill Crane calls? Not calming at all. Unfortunately, I didn’t get any video of them – they’re hanging out in the plants and reeds of the marsh – but they are clearly close to our boat. We pretty regularly see cranes near our house; they’re usually hanging out at the ponds we walk past on our walks. Here’s a post with a good picture of cranes along our normal walking path. Here’s a post that has no pictures of cranes but talks about them; it does, however, have a funny picture of Schooner. The cranes we see walking might give us a squawk or two as a warning , but I have never heard them make this much noise as these ones on the lake made on our walks (at least, they haven’t made so much noise that I can remember).

Enjoy the latest in what is quickly becoming a series of videos on the sounds of Wisconsin in spring.