Air Date: Week of June 5, 2026

Mark Seth Lender’s most recent essay shares his experience seeing sandhill cranes at Bosque del Apache National Wildlife Refuge in New Mexico. (Photo: Mark Seth Lender)

Sandhill cranes are now nesting up on the tundra, northwest of upper Hudson Bay. Explorer in Residence Mark Seth Lender has followed them there from their wintering grounds in Bosque del Apache National Wildlife Refuge, New Mexico.

Transcript

DOERING: It’s Living on Earth, I’m Jenni Doering.

O’NEILL: And I’m Aynsley O’Neill.

Sandhill cranes are now nesting up on the tundra, northwest of upper Hudson Bay.
Explorer in Residence Mark Seth Lender has followed them there from their wintering grounds in Bosque del Apache National Wildlife Refuge, New Mexico.

I Know Where The Wild Crane Goes
Sandhill Crane
Bosque del Apache National Wildlife Refuge
© 2026 Mark Seth Lender

Sandhill cranes are working their way between the rows. In a place planted for them, made safe for them by nearby flooded fields that glaze in the night, firm enough to stand upon until morning breaks. A northern harrier comes coasting above the patchy snow and the jangle of grasses, listening, for small life that hides beneath. His owl-like face captures sound, the angular spread of his wings capturing air and silence. Cleaving to the scrub at the section fence, coyotes and foxes tread, so light of foot they barely leave a sign. Where even now the wind-scorched aspens hold to their leaves, a single kestrel lands. In the steel-blue light every manhood-color of his plumage on display. Redwing blackbirds lift settle lift again. Snow geese startled by rumor more than risk take flight, one coordinate mass of wings, and noise.

Now from the thousands, one sandhill crane sets himself apart. He will not bend down to the hard yellow corn. The seed heads native to the land are his take. He stands tall. His beak is long and dark. The ruddy orange of his wings, his feathers pristine and tight. He is clean. His will be a long life. The way he feeds is life lived, as it was lived.

How the young cranes leap and gamble! White flake breaks from the greyness, falls upon their heads, the urging, the urging!

Yes, I know where the wild crane goes. North. Into unspeakable cold. That turns flesh stone at the glance of its touch, except in flight in the heat of migration. As long as there is North, and the Arctic willow thrives, the Arctic heather coated in rime far on the tundra where the Longest Day knows no night; as long as the permafrost holds, and the citadel of southern Refuge remains.

There will be Sandhill Cranes.

O’NEILL: That’s Living on Earth’s Explorer in Residence, Mark Seth Lender.

 

Links

Explore more of Mark Seth Lender’s work

Learn about Sandhill Cranes

Read about Bosque del Apache National Wildlife Refuge