Reviewed by: Juli E. Wilcox
Many nature photographers love to photograph Sandhill Cranes. There is something about their sight and sound that stirs us to shiver in pre-dawn frost on the river or wildlife refuge, or sweat and swat bugs in more tropical climates trying for the perfect image. Sometimes we are fortunate enough to find the large, mysterious birds nearly in our own backyards. For author, award-winning nature photographer and passionate storyteller Michael Forsberg, it was all this and more.
Mike spent 10 years near his home territory photographing cranes on the Platte River in central Nebraska, but it wasn't until three hundred days in the frozen or swampy field spanning five years, 65,000 miles on migration routes, 13 locations, four countries and a thousand or so rolls of film that he was able to tell their story.
On Ancient Wings: The Sandhill Cranes of North America is an excellent example of how one photographer put his photographic work to a broader use. Mike found photos and words to express truths not only about the birds, but also about demands of humankind and dangerous changes in habitat. With more and more appropriation of natural water sources that supply the Platte River, the prime migration route for a half-million sandhills each spring, the cycles of renewal may be disrupted. In Mike's words as reported by NEBRASKAland Magazine, "Sandhill cranes are perhaps the oldest surviving bird species on the planet, with fossil records that date back at least four million years. To look a crane in the eye is to look into North America's ancient past." He states, "A true survivor, highly intelligent and adaptable to a fault, the sandhill crane is a species at a crossroads. The diverse grassland, wetland and riverine habitats that are essential for sandhill crane survival are being degraded or are disappearing at alarming rates."
To tell this story in photos, Mike selected the unexpected: a string of cranes cutting across the face of Mt. McKinley in the Alaska Range of Denali National Park and Preserve, Cuban children costumed as crane dancers, captive breeding efforts in Louisiana, a mom with her nestled chick in wing. All help tell the story: what goes around comes around. We are what we do, and it’s time to pay attention or we may lose what for centuries we have taken for granted.
In 168 pages and 150 photos, with prose as beautifully braided as the Platte on the prairie, and hard to argue images, Mike makes one nature photographer’s case for cranes, the birds that fly on ancient wings. Published 2004; now in its second printing.
On Ancient Wings: The Sandhill Cranes of North America and other nature photography books can be purchased via Amazon.com through the NatureScapes.Net store.
