Cranes are waking

Peter Matthiessen, in his book Birds of Heaven: Travels with Cranes, creates breath-stopping pictures in words. One of my favorites sketches cranes roosting in an icy Japanese river at daybreak...

Beyond the bend, the white forms hunch in icy mist. At a place where the soft and deep dry snow descends to the very edges of the ice, the still shapes create a black and white barrier across the stream.

The cranes are waking. One preens a little, but the rest seem to await the first rays of sun before starting to shift and move about in the black riffle of unfrozen current. Though not in danger from mammal predators (the wolves and tigers are extinct, and the bears hibernate), the cranes of Kushiro still roost in streams; few if any are caught by the ice, though they sometimes fly up banded with ice anklets.