Maine Outdoor Journal

A 10-point buck may fall to my well-placed shot this coming deer season, creating a lifetime thrill, but no dead trophy will excite me more than sighting two live birds on a rainy morning earlier this month.

The incident proved once again that joys from the outdoor life transcend killing. Our sports teach us about the natural world, including ornithology.

The sighting occurred on Route 27 north of Hammond Lumber in Belgrade village, or more precisely on the highway's west side in a field gully just north of Kenneth Workman Municipal Field.

Two huge birds caught my attention, and in the lowery day's subdued backlighting, they looked 6 feet tall. It was just a glimpse out of the corner of my left eye, though, before my speeding vehicle put a knoll between us, blocking the view.

I did a U-turn and headed back with a quivering stomach, worried that the birds had flown, but no, they still stood there like statues. I had only seen this species in guidebooks, but the solid gray plumage and particularly bald red forehead made identification easy — sandhill cranes (Grus canadensis).

Sighting this species in Maine flabbergasted me, because we associate the bird with the Midwest and, as the Latin name suggests, Canada.

My home lies 12 minutes away, so I rushed there to get binoculars and a bird book and returned. Surprise of surprises, the cranes hadn't fled, and my binoculars and guidebook verified the sighting.

I had never heard of sandhill cranes in Maine, so I called Tom Hodgeman, a wildlife biologist at the Department of Inland Fisheries and Wildlife's Bangor office. The sighting didn't surprise Hodgeman, and he referred to the Belgrade Lakes as "sandhill-crane central."

Many birders have seen this species, which stands 40 to 48 inches tall and sports a 6- to 7-foot wingspread, in Belgrade, Smithfield and other Maine locations. Although no naturalist would call sandhill cranes common in Maine, they are showing up and even breeding here.

Hodgeman told me Maine birders in the know are keeping the cranes secret for fear people will love them to death.

Harry Vanderweide, a television personality, writer and naturalist from Augusta, knew about the Belgrade cranes and told me that while boating on Messalonskee Lake's south end, he had heard them calling in the marsh on the east side of Route 27, close to my sighting spot.

Peterson translates the call as a repeated "garoo-a-a-a," and Sibley describes it as a "loud, resonant, wooden-sounding bugle with a rolling, rattling quality." Words do no justice to this impressive sound, though.

Recently, Heather, my oldest daughter, was talking about the fast brook-trout fishing we enjoyed on a river one morning last May. We tangled with 30 brook trout, give or take a couple, and they measured from 7 to 17 inches. The brookies impressed Heather, but age will cure that priority.

Two memories from that day stick in my mind more than 30 trout.

First, Blackburnian warblers were flitting through bank alders all morning, many gorgeous males with flaming-orange throats.

Second, black-throated green warblers were calling from nearby treetops, a merry, sing-song sound — "zee zee zee zee zo zeet," a trout-stream lullaby.

Hunting, angling, wild-food gathering and gardening put us in the natural world, which offers us so much more than killing critters or collecting veggies and nuts. Indeed, these endeavors get us looking — and truly seeing.

Ken Allen of Belgrade Lakes is a writer, editor and photographer. You may contact him at :

KAllyn800@aol.com