On the Road is a weekday feature spotlighting reader photo submissions.
From the exotic to the familiar, whether you’re traveling or in your own backyard, we would love to see the world through your eyes.
Albatrossity
This month one of the greatest wildlife migratory spectacles on the planet is taking place in central Nebraska. 600,000 Sandhill cranes (Antigone canadensis), from Texas, Oklahoma, Arizona, Kansas and even Mexico fly north to converge on a sixty-mile long stretch of the Platte River. They stay there for a few weeks, fattening on waste corn and small marshland critters, before they leave and head north to breed. Some of these birds will end up in tomorrow, across the International Date Line in northeast Siberia, Others will find ancestral marshes in Canada and Alaska, raising the next generation of cranes to add to the flock next spring.
I have been making a spring pilgrimage to the Platte River for many years as well. Once you see (and hear!) this magical event for the first time, you might find yourself going back again and again, pulled north by the thoughts of spring, renewal, and wonder. So here are a few images I have collected over the years; none of these does it justice. If you ever have a chance to visit the Platte during March, go see it, and hear it, for yourself. If you can’t get there this year, here’s the next best thing. Check this out in the morning or in the evening, and turn up the sound. You can thank me later.
During the day the cranes feed and loaf and dance in fields and meadows some distance from the river. This is a common sight as you drive around Grand Island or Kearney in March. A couple of these guys are “dancing”, a ritualized pair-bonding activity that is always a treat to watch.
In the evening the birds move closer to the river, where they will roost on shallow sandbars overnight. This affords them safety in numbers (Surely one of their neighbors will sound the alarm if a coyote tries to sneak up on the flock, right?), but it has to be a long night with your toes in cold water, and so they dawdle on their way to the roosts.
Here are some more shots of cranes coming in to the roosts, accented by a fiery Nebraska sunset in each instance.
Incoming cranes in the sunset.
Just another sunset.
As the sun goes down, most of the birds will be on the river, in large groups like this one. The location of these roosts changes every year as the configuration of the sandbars changes.
But some of them will continue to fly around and look for a spot even as the sun is slipping below the western horizon.
Lots of other birds, like this Pied-billed Grebe (Podilymbus podiceps) spend the night on the river and its backwaters.
In the morning the birds come off the river to go find breakfast. That can be gradual, as with this small group in the dawn light, or it can be an eruption of wings and bugling and swirling masses of birds if someone, or something like an overflying Bald Eagle, gets their attention.
The Lilian Annette Rowe Sanctuary near Gibbon NE, has many blinds where you can spend the evening or the morning hours near the river with the birds, accompanied by a guide who can answer all the questions that come up. Some of these shots were made from their blinds, including this one. As noted above, the dawn experiences and the evening experiences are very different, but both are highly recommended.
swiftfox
I was at a class at the UNM field station in March 1997 and one morning we went to Bosque del Apache Refuge to see the cranes. Very much worth getting up for!
Mary G
Those are beautiful. Love all the sunsets.
OzarkHillbilly
Some day… Was hoping to go this year… Next year then.
Geo Wilcox
These birds fly over our farm every year. One year there was a whooping crane in the formation. It was spectacular, the flock turned into the sun and this brilliant white flash exploded in the sky, WHOOPER!!!!!! It remains one of my most thrilling birder moments.
Ten Bears
Even Cowgirls get the blues, sometimes.
The cranes were the story, the rest window-dressing.
raven
Can we assume that they took this route before there was corn there?
raven
@Ten Bears:
Emmylou Harris ~ “Even Cowgirls Get The Blues” (With Dolly and Linda)
HeartlandLiberal
Here in Indiana, the Sandhill Cranes pass through the Jasper-Pulaski Fish and Wildlife Area while migrating. It is in western south central Indiana. A friend of mine and I drove out one year to view them, and we did not regret the time spent. If you just google “sandhill cranes indiana,” the first link will be to the DNR page describing the fall migration.
Enzymer
I so miss the cranes. Grew up in the country at Lexington, NE. First cries of the cranes & all 12 of us would pelt out of our 1 room school house to see them. The harbingers of spring & fall. Magnificent, graceful birds.
Enzymer
@raven: oh yes, but the early settlers marked the seasons by the cranes.
raven
@HeartlandLiberal: Seems pretty north?
raven
@Enzymer: I get that I just wondered if the corn was the pivotal element or a bonus?
Laura Too
I love Monday mornings. Beautiful, thanks!
Geminid
@HeartlandLiberal: Another cohort of cranes stop off in the San Luis Valley, at the ponds and marshes along the upper Rio Grande River. The Monte Vista Wildlife Refuge, a few miles northwest of Alamosa, Colorado, began it’s annual Crane Festival a few days ago. Much of it is online this year, although crane watchers are probably checking out the birds in person. Alamosa is a great town to visit any time, although winter there is very cold and windy. It is on the west slope of the Front Range, about three hours north of Albuquerque, New Mexico.
Albatrossity
@raven: They did travel to the Platte to fatten up before Corn became king. But they had a much longer stretch of the river to use, and the wet meadows along several hundred miles of river fed them. Now the river has dams on it, and the sandbar habitat they need to roost at night is only found (and in some cases artificially maintained) in the ~60 mile stretch between Grand Island and Elm Creek (with much smaller numbers east and west of those sites). Corn waste has allowed them to use the Platte as the stopover site and still get fat. The minerals that they need for egg-laying might be the limiting factor now; previously those were obtained from snails and small vertebrates in the much more extensive wet meadows.
Albatrossity
@Geminid: Yes, the Rio Grande Valley population is impressive to see as well. They don’t migrate to arctic Canada or Alaska to breed; they nest in the Rocky Mountains (WY, UT, MT and some in Canada)
Nelle
@OzarkHillbilly: There could be a flock of Balloon Juicers there (or would that be a murder?). We had to cancel last year and didn’t reserve a blind this year as we were uncertain if we would be fully vaccinated in time. We’ve been twice and this year are watching by crane cam.
We did get over to the Missouri river for some of the snow geese migration last week. Back in our Alaska days, my husband, then a bush pilot, used to fly Fish and Wildlife surveys of snow geese on the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (as well as caribou, bear, and musk ox surveys). We had sandhill cranes on our island, Barter Island, too, but I think those were up through CA, not NB.
raven
@Albatrossity: Thanks!
Albatrossity
I just looked at the live Crane Cam at the Rowe Sanctuary. Looks like a drippy foggy day on the Platte, so no fancy sunrise seems likely. But the cranes are calling on the river, and the sound seems to be made even more magical by the foggy conditions. Check it out, and turn up the volume as you go about your morning rituals.
Betty Cracker
Would love to see that in person someday. We are lucky to have a non-migratory Sandhill population here in Florida so we see them year-round, but in pairs or small family units rather than large flocks. When we see a large flock flying overhead, we assume they’re a transitory migrating population.
JPL
@Albatrossity: Noisy little critters! Thanks for the link.
Mike in Oly
Really beautiful set of shots. Thanks for sharing these.
MelissaM
Is that sound as deafening as it seems it might be in person? As usual, your shots are just lovely. That last one is stunning.
MelissaM
Canada goose in the middle of the crane cam, wondering WTF?
Yellow Dog
The chapter “Marshland Elegy” from “Sand County Almanac” by Aldo Leopoldo has a stunningly beautiful description of the crane migration. I read it in high school, and even though I’ve never seen the crane flocks, it changed my attitude toward the natural world forever.
Albatrossity
@MelissaM: It is mostly background noise, and you can hear different birds (geese, Red-winged Blackbirds, etc) as well as the cranes. Among the crane noises you can pick out the higher-pitched whistles of the youngsters as well.
But it does get deafening if 40-50 thousand of them get off the river all at once. A sound you won’t forget, ever.
Benw
Just wow
K488
Gorgeous pictures – Thanks! For twenty years my family and I lived in rural Michigan, and sandhill cranes are what we miss the most down here in Indiana. They would flock in the fields around our house, make a huge amount of noise, and be utterly fascinating. Watching them take off or land was like watching a fleet of WWII bombers in action. We also had wild turkeys, Canada geese and blue herons. The trade-off has been the flock of pileated woodpeckers that occasionally startle us in the woods, flying at eye level.
JanieM
Thanks, Albatrossity. These are almost too beautiful to take in, feeding as they do into my already hyped up anticipation of springtime. I’ll be checking in with the crane camera all day.
Nice sunsets/sunrises, too. I love the second-to-last shot, with the four birds in the dawn light.
mvr
Thank you for the good photos (I liked the grebe in particular) and for reminding me to go. This is just west of us about 100 miles and I have to go way west into the panhandle later in the month to retrieve some data cards from a stop action camera we’ve got on a conservation project out there. So I will add in some time to stop and see the cranes.
I gather that use of Audubon’s blinds is somewhat limited because of the coronavirus and that the Rowe Sanctuary building will be closed this year for the same reason. But I think that small groups can still make some blind reservations. FWIW, I have never used the blinds myself and yet I’ve seen plenty of cranes at the appropriate time of year.
J R in WV
I think the first time we was Sandhill cranes was back in 1988, give or take a year. We were coming back south out of Jackson Hole WY, where we had visited and hiked in the Tetons and up in Yellowstone, heading for Salt Lake to fly home to WV. We drove west into Idaho and crossed flat land with wetlands galore, and cranes and waterbirds by the tons.
Then many years later we first visited a cousin in Cochise County AZ, where huge flocks of Sandhill cranes overwinter. They used to come for a big shallow lake just south of Wilcox, but that is now a playa in salt flats since an earthquake pinched off the tiny springs that fed the shallow lake. The cranes still come to Cochise County, though. You can watch them under the center-pivot irrigation spraying water on newly planted crops.
The sounds of thousands of the birds in the low brush of the valley floor is amazing — you can’t see them, but you certainly know they are in there, burbling and cheeping at one another as they hunt for bugs and seeds and such. Cousin calls them her “Flying Cocktail Party” from the sounds. Wonderful birds. I hope to see a Whooping Crane someday! And a condor! And a …..
ETA: Thanks Albatrossity for the typically great photos and information about these great birds!
pat
Thanks for the lovely pics. Reminds me that I haven’t been to the Necedah Wildlife Refuge in a while. There are sandhill and whooping cranes to be seen, central Wisconsin.
Albatrossity
@J R in WV: Interestingly, those cranes that winter at Wilcox Playa in AZ fly to Nebraska in March before heading to Siberia. They are Lesser Sandhill Cranes, and their breeding sites are the furthest west of all the populations. Why they would fly to NE instead of directly to Siberia is a mystery, but maybe there are no good migratory refueling stations on that more direct route. Many years ago I was privileged to be able to help out with rocket netting cranes near Elm Creek NE, and the crane that was fitted with a transmitter that day summered in Siberia and spent the next winter in AZ before it came back to the Platte in the next spring!
Xavier
Down by the Rio Grande these days, sometimes I’ll hear them overhead, circling up so high I can barely see them but can still hear their croaking cries.
way2blue
Magical. I especially like the photo of all the cranes crowding near the river at dusk. We have Canadian Geese that pass through and blue heron who nest above a nearby pond. But nothing this magnificent!