Book Review: The Birds of Heaven: Travels with Cranes

"Perhaps more than any other living creates, [cranes] evoke the retreating wilderness, the vanishing horizons of clean water, earth, and air upon which their species - and ours, too, though we learn it very late - must ultimately depend for survival."

There are few animals which have had as prominent a role in human culture across the globe and throughout the ages as the cranes.  Among the world’s largest flying birds, the fifteen species of crane inhabit ever continent except Antarctica and South America.  Across their broad range, they have been worshipped and celebrated by local peoples, woven into myths and legends.  In Asia they are symbols of good luck, peace, and longevity.  In North America, some Native American tribes claimed decent from the crane.  In Australia, the native crane – the brolga – was so closely associated with the native Aborigines that European colonists called it “the native companion.”  At any rate, the long association between our species and the world’s cranes has been largely positive for us, detrimental for the birds.

In The Birds of Heaven: Travels with Cranes, renowned nature writer Peter Matthiessen travels the world in search of all fifteen crane species.  His quest takes him to all five continents where the birds are found, from the Demilitarized Zone on the Korean Peninsula to Florida to the Sudan.  Along the way, he is joined by prominent ornithologists, including the founders of the International Crane Foundation in Wisconsin, the only facility in the world to display and breed all fifteen species.  Matthiessen describes each bird in the context of its environment and its relationship with the local people, and explains how the birds, so revered by early humans, have become imperiled.   He also describes efforts being made to restore them to their rightful places, and shares some success stories – the return of the Eurasian crane in Western Europe, for example, or the slow by steady return of the whooping crane in North America.

Cranes pose some of the greatest conservation challenges in the world.  They are large and beautiful, making themselves prominent targets for hunters.  They enjoy helping themselves to our crops and fields, inviting the wrath of farmers (though the author describes several cases of local people cheerfully feeding “their” cranes).  Unlike many other large birds, such as flamingos and many storks, they are territorial, keeping themselves at low population densities for much of the year.  Perhaps most problematically, many are migratory, leaving themselves at the mercy of several national governments as they follow their ancient migration routes (routes which, in the case of some species, carry them over the highest mountains of earth).

Instead of viewing these factors – especially the later – as overwhelming obstacles towards saving cranes, Matthiessen sees them as opportunities for humans to band together, uniting in the cause of saving some of our most emblematic birds.  The first chapter details a “conservation cruise” down the Amur River, with Russian, Japanese, and Chinese naturalists (hailing from countries that have historically been rivals) working together to formulate a plan to save the imperiled cranes of northeast Asia.   The parties involved may not agree of much, including the names of the birds that they are trying to save (the alternate name “Japanese crane” for the red-crowned crane does not sit well with some members of the expedition), but all are agreed that cranes are magnificent birds, well worth saving.

After reading Matthiessen’s excellent book, accompanied by beautiful illustrations by Robert Bateman, any reader will be forced to agree. 

Birds of Heaven: Travels with Cranes at Amazon.com