Word: craning
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Though all birds are gifted with a share of grace, only the crane, with its stately neck and stirring wings, can claim royal bloodlines. In ancient China, Prince Yi of Wie gave cranes the rank of civil servants and generals, while in Japan they were considered sages and became the symbol of peace in the aftermath of war. Australian Aborigines patterned tribal rituals after the cranes' elegant dances, and in India they are considered the holy messengers of Vishnu; they are the birds of heaven...
...Like many beautiful things, however, cranes are delicate?and they are dying. In Birds of Heaven: Travels with Cranes (North Point Press; 350 pages), nature writer and novelist Peter Matthiessen records his encounters with each of the 15 species of crane, a series of journeys that takes him through Asia, Australia, Africa and North America. He arrives each time in the wake of vanishing populations like a policeman reaching a murder scene too late. The cranes' struggles in their eroding habitats are depressingly familiar but Matthiessen and his fellow "craniacs" remain undaunted. His book, like his life, is a tribute...
...will have little dampening effect on the blazes. Fire officials say that rain is the best change that they can hope for, and is the key to ending the wildfires. There is some hope on the horizon, in the form of two giant water-bombing helicopters. Two Erikson Air-Crane Helitankers are expected to arrive in the area Monday, courtesy of fire officials in the western...
Cameras are poised, eyes peeled and expectations high as we cruise the water lily-strewn channels of the Yellow Water wetlands in the tropical Top End of the Australian outback. "Brolga on the left," the tour guide announces. All eyes swivel left, toward the graceful gray crane. Cameras click. "Egret just ahead," he calls. More craning (of necks) and pointing of cameras. "Darter, tern, black-necked stork!" The birders in the group are in a state of near ecstasy. The rest of us are biding our time. Ten minutes later we round a corner and the collective cry goes...
...months before, more than 5,000 people were killed by an earthquake that shook the western port city of Kobe. "Some strange malaise, some bitter aftertaste lingers on," writes novelist Haruki Murakami in his account of the times, Underground: The Tokyo Gas Attack and the Japanese Psyche. "We crane our necks and look around us, as if to ask: where did all that come from...