Othello's sandhill crane festival takes wing

Birds of a feather flock together for aviary enthusiasts

OTHELLO — Barn owls, curlews and yellow-headed blackbirds were just a few of the celebrity guest stars on hand to greet goers to the eighth annual Othello Sandhill Crane Festival.

A virtual smorgasbord of crane-related activities greeted participants throughout the weekend festival, including University of Washington biology professor Estella Leopold's talk about how the cranes enrich peoples' lives and their interaction with historical figures and tours galore. Tours included crane viewing, burrowing owl viewing buses and tours of the Columbia National Wildlife Refuge.

Stephen Yezerinac, a biology professor from Portland, Ore., said he was coming back from skiing in British Columbia, and decided to stop and see the festival for the first time.

"Somebody told me about it a couple years ago," he said. "It's an interesting area; I went out bird watching before the (Refuge) tour and saw a lot of interesting birds. There were marsh wrens singing, yellow-headed blackbirds and canvasback ducks — that was my favorite."

Yezerinac said he thought most people live in cities and don't know a lot about wildlife, making festivals like the Sandhill Crane Festival important.

"If we understood (wildlife) a little bit better, we'd have a greater appreciation for what we have to do to preserve it," he said.

Good friends Lesley Phillips and Tom Steinburn hailed from Lakewood, Wash. This was Phillips' second time at the festival, after attending last year, and Steinburn's first.

"I enjoyed it so thoroughly, and I just wanted to do it again," Phillips said. "There were lots of trips that I didn't go on last year, so I'm fitting those in this year. You just can't do it all."

Steinburn took the Refuge tour to find out about the sagebrush-steppe country, after traveling in the dry, high-desert parts of Nevada, Utah, Oregon and Washington.

"I didn't know enough about it," he said.

Gloria Ford of Olympia said, perhaps unsurprisingly, that the sandhill cranes were what drew her to the festival.

"I've seen them all over the world; it's just nice to see them at home," she said.

Olive Hull, also of Olympia, was also in attendance for the cranes.

"I wanted to see them migrating," Hull said. "We've birded and we've never been to this part of the country, and I thought I'd come. You have experts who take you to places that then you can come back on your own and go to. They show you where the good birding spots are."

This was the first time at the festival for Woodinville resident Brian Bell, president of the Washington Ornithological Society, which also had a table at the vendor area.

"It's just a chance to meet other birders, get out and see the cranes and all the other good birds that show up this time of year," he said.

Festivals like the Sandhill Crane Festival get people interested in birds that maybe wouldn't be otherwise, Bell said, as well as educate people about the surrounding area and how everything fits together.

"It brings a lot of people that are interested in, in this case the cranes or whatever the focus is for another festival … which actually provides economic benefit to the communities that are the host to that," Bell said. "It oftentimes acts as a solidifying point for people that have conservation biases anyway, but since our society places so much emphasis on economic value, being able to link those two things together winds up being very important."

Renee Williams was on the refuge tour with her 8-year-old son Nathaniel. Her father is on the Sandhill Crane Festival Committee and she grew up in Othello. This was their third year in attendance, at least, she said.

"Grandpa," she said with a laugh when asked what keeps her coming back. "No, we love it. The things in the (Othello High School) gym for the kids are great, and we've done three tours now. They've been really interesting."

"It's good," Nathaniel Williams said. "I like seeing my grandparents and I like the tours."

"I grew up in this area, and never really had an appreciation for the biodiversity that was here, so it's really interesting to me as an adult to learn what I grew up with," Renee Williams said. "It just makes you appreciate what you see when you drive by every day."