When we hear his call we hear no mere bird. We hear the trumpet in the orchestra of evolution. He is the symbol of our untamable past, of that incredible sweep of millennia which underlies and conditions the daily affairs of birds and men. Our ability to perceive quality in nature begins, as in art, with the pretty. It expands through successive stages of the beautiful to values as yet uncaptured by language. The quality of cranes lies, I think, in this higher gamut, as yet beyond the reach of words.

~Aldo Leopold

Sandhill Cranes landing at sunset in Crane Ponds at Bosque del Apache National Wildlife Refuge, NM (click photo to enlarge)

A short video clip with cranes calling at sunset at Bosque del Apache.