Every March, 35,000 cranes fly into the sleepy town of Othello, Washington, making a few days stop on their treacherous journey north. For the past 27 years, this migration has been celebrated by locals and tourists alike at the Sandhill Crane Festival, with some traveling from Europe to see the cranes. Even coming from LBCC it’s not a short trip, with a six-hour train ride up to Seattle and a three- to-four hour drive through Snoqualmie Pass.
It can be difficult for some people to understand what makes these birds unique. For dedicated birders, a single sighting can be an exceptionally moving moment. There is plenty to do at the festival, including lectures, tours, crafts, vendors, and more, all in celebration of nature and community.
Arriving on Friday, we saw the rolling agricultural fields and shrublands of eastern Washington’s high desert, a landscape carved by the Missoula floods thousands of years ago. Home to alfalfa, corn, apples, and more, Othello is a convenient visit on the cranes’ long migration route. Cranes are opportunistic omnivores, meaning they eat what is at hand. Sandhill cranes pass through the roughest and most remote places in the United States. Othello is a well-deserved break, offering them a buffet of spent grain and bugs.
With so much to do, time passes fast at the festival.
We started our morning with a lecture from Dr. Gary Ivey called “Sandhill Cranes of the Pacific Flyway.” Ivey, an older man dressed in a patterned button-down covered in cranes, is retired from research; he spent decades working with these birds. He happily informed the crowd about three migratory subspecies of sandhill cranes: greater, lesser, and Canadian. Each subspecies has its quirks. For example, the Canadian sandhill cranes walk from their marshy roosts to the coast, bringing back an intertidal diet for their colts (crane chicks). They trek through the woods, avoiding predators such as coyotes and bears. In Othello, the vast majority of cranes are in the lesser subspecies. It is not uncommon to see several birds from other subspecies flocking together.
Ivey ended with a story from his research days about a group of cranes and three hungry coyotes. These coyotes tried for hours to close in on the group of cranes and colts, but they never even got close. The long-necked birds can use their beaks to strike when necessary.
Sandhill cranes can be a fearsome opponent, standing at four to five feet tall (depending on the subspecies) with powerful feet, a sharp beak, and an even sharper mind. As Karen Ceballos, a current United States Fish and Wildlife (USFW) employee, told the commuter people are required to wear safety glasses when banding a crane’s ankle, Ceballos told me, “They aim for the middle of your eyes.”
USFW answered questions, rewarded prizes to kids who completed a series of educational crafts, and handed out free posters and coloring books. Guests who bought plush sandhill cranes were encouraged to visit the USFW booth, where they could put real bands on their birds’ ankles.
We ended that day with a crane viewing tour. Guests loaded into a school bus and were driven through the country to spot cranes. The tour was led by Ceballos, who, between comments on wildlife, told the crowd an amusing story about a white-naped crane repopulation effort.
This effort included a researcher courting a female crane due to her aggressive behavior towards males of her species. In short, he now had a crane wife. Funnily enough, this worked; part of working in these restoration efforts is thinking up creative solutions, such as doing a mating dance with a crane.
Also in attendance was a local retired farmer who informed us about the agricultural history and present of the area. At sunset, we arrived at the reservoir where cranes flew above as they called, some landing in the fields.
The next day started bright and early with the five-hour Royal Slope birding bus tour. On this tour, guests learned about biodiversity in the scrublands of the Columbia Basin. With a bus full of birdwatchers, it was easy to find many species: long-billed curlews, loggerhead shrikes, great-horned owls, American kestrels, tricolor blackbirds, around 30,000 snow geese, and, of course, sandhill cranes.
Whether you are a lifelong nature lover, just starting, or excited to learn more, the Sandhill Crane Festival is a place for everyone. See you there next March!
This article originally appeared in the April 2025 edition of The Commuter.
