The cacophony is disorienting in the darkness. The avian din ruffled me awake as the cranes spotted a threat along the riverbank, ousted each other's roosts, or did whatever it is that causes the crescendo of calls to peak and valley time and again well before dawn. Hypersensitive to missing their morning, I woke easily most of the night. As spring dawned, however, I rose with it to find that the shifts and moves of the birds during the night had placed them nearby and delivered a spectacle older than the river.