Long legs drifting below a pair of giant-winged birds, like silken threads caught in a gentle breeze, glide overhead. Their timeless journey celebrating spring’s arrival. I listen for an ancient avian rattle, a familiar cackle-call as two greater sandhill cranes (Grus canadensis tabida) announce their seasonal homecoming.

Traveling from non-breeding territories in Mexico and the southern United States, banded cranes show annual roundtrip migrations across North America can tally 6,000 miles, according to studies. Greater sandhill cranes, one of six subspecies, return to Utah and breeding grounds as far north as Canada year after year.

Drawn by temperate days of expanded light, wetlands and waterways, these magnificent red-crowned birds grace our communities with their plumaged presence and captivating behavior. Two cranes end their epic migratory flight by landing gracefully in a flourishing grassy meadow behind my barn.

Standing tall at nearly 4 feet, pairs of cranes bonded for life need shallow wetlands, fresh water marshes and open fields to sustain their populations.

The crane’s first act after reaching sexual maturity is a distinctive dance performed with necks erect and outstretched wings spanning 5 to 7 feet. The birds delicately lift and place their feet with three front toes on soggy soil. I relish the wildlife ballet as they encircle their mate, first arabesque, demi plié, arabesque. Soon, two birds in the back field will become three and maybe four.

Bravo!

Parents prefer nesting near water on wet ground. The crane’s large, secluded nests are constructed with grasses and other nearby plant material, which also provides forage for hungry parents and their offspring. Adults build their nests and co-parent, incubating one to three eggs for 30 days. Chicks eat on their own immediately and will gain a pound per week.

All summer I observe long-billed crane families foraging, dining on meadow roots, grains, snails, small reptiles and rodents. And I am privy to a unique flock behavior known as  unison calls.  The cranes’ synchronized calling is yet another way these birds strengthen family bonds and survival.

In short order, the fledglings show gray flight feathers and hone their flying skills. The juvenile’s distinctive red crown won’t appear for another six months, but by their first spring they will be nearly full grown before taking off at summer’s end in a return migration to a southern range.

When the following breeding season begins, parents living in the wild for 20 to 30 years drive away their offspring. The young cranes will join other juveniles for a two- to four-year period before completing a cycle to seek out a mate and establish their own breeding ground.

During a spring escape to southern Utah’s red rock country, a desert-rat pal led me on a desolate hike through canyons of jagged, golden boulders edged by groves of Joshua trees. We climbed and scrambled up and around, in and out, eventually reaching what at first appeared to be an unremarkable outcropping.

We circled around to discover a rock face marked with prehistoric black etchings. Native American images depicting big horn sheep, snakes, humans and geometric designs sparked our imaginations. Then we noticed an image, carved a thousand years or more ago by an ancient culture. It was unmistakeable.

Three elongated toes shaped simply belonged to a water-hungry sandhill crane, among our planet’s oldest living birds. This indelible record of a once fluid habitat that lured wild, wet-footed inhabitants provoked a new awareness and a perspective tinged with hope.

Now, when I listen for the ancient voice of sandhill cranes flying overhead, their dangling legs anchored by wide-splayed feet, it will be a reminder of their resilience and survival imprinted in time and memory.

Perhaps it is the crane’s unison call declaring, “We are still here.”

Leslie Miller is the co-editor of “Reimagining A Place for the Wild” and a former, long-time resident of Park City who now lives in Midway.