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We go to Linum every October, since hearing and seeing these beautiful birds in their numbers takes some of the sting out of the otherwise grim onset of Central European autumn. So far, local observers have counted 30,000 cranes and the stopover season has only started.

The farmers there share the lore that if you scare off the cranes from your fields even once, you won’t see them again in your lifetime, so I guess Linum has shown the cranes some gentleness and hospitality and I’m glad of it. I took some pictures:

OK, the Peacock Butterfly is not a crane, but I saw it while I was waiting for cranes. NABU is the conservation society concerned with the support of sustainable tourism and species protection in the region and due to their efforts and that of the village and surrounds, Linum is host not only to cranes but also wild breeding populations of storks, and an equally-impressive stopover population of grey geese.

They were in Kladow:

A grapevine runs along our walls; its little grapes were encased in ice before the last starlings in town could harvest them.

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Hooded crow in snow.

Swans walk along a frozen waterway, searching for a break in the ice that isn’t there.

But for a dog it’s just more room to frolic.