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Usually it is the oldest crane in the flock that will call the others to join him for late night story telling but occasionally a younger crane will take over and hold the nightly gathering in their place. Some of their stories are as old as their migratory routes and some are yesterday’s news. Many times you will find that there are larger gatherings at the young cranes get-together’s than you will find at the old timers’. To their dismay the old ones find that things meaningful to them don’t have the appeal to grab the young’s attention any more especially after they have been told many, many, times. The old stories get boring the young say (not that one about the old crane that ate so much corn it couldn’t …) while something new and feather-tingling keeps the gathering fresh and exciting.

According to Dr. Beakston our resident birdologist a male Sandhill Crane is known as a ‘him’ while the female is called a ‘her’ in an effort to be able to distinguish between the sexes as they appear to be very similar to the untrained eye. However this is an acquired skill leading to many a misidentification and much hilarity amongst the ranks of younger birds. Tonight it is a young crane calling the flock in for the nightly narrative and his story is absolutely riveting to the younger audience.

His adventure of flying over a hip hop concert and almost being shot out of the sky by  appreciative concert goers exercising their right of self-expression left his listeners nearly speechless. They too secretly and some not so secretly, wished that they could have been almost shot out of the sky over a concert so they would be cool and have stories to tell when it was their turn to hold the meeting.

Afterwards as always there were the usual warnings issued by the older members of the flock about the dangers of concert flyovers such as, “it might be fun now, but wait until someone gets an eye out and then where would you be”.  But of course, during moments of great excitement like this those warnings went largely unheeded. The young are invincible after all. There were many meetings held that night by whomever could drum up an audience and this one at the middle pond at Bosque del Apache was no better or worse than others, a little louder perhaps but a lot more exciting to those reveling in their youth. There would be many an eye peeled for future concerts and the thought of the risk and danger ahead kept this group hopping into the early morning hours.