Sandhill Crane Migration

I love birds. Their flight skills, shock-absorbing hollow bones, crazy sense of direction and instinctive urge to fly hundreds or thousands of miles with the changing seasons. They have an amazing community spirit and in some cases, like the Sandhill Cranes a "mate for life" attitude many are somehow born with!

Sandhill Cranes are 4-5' high and have a wingspan of 6'.  Perfectly designed for wading in rivers and migrating long distances... Check it out: The blue line is for Sandhill Cranes.

Mark and I traveled to Ogallala, Nebraska last weekend to witness an ancient part of the migration route. 

I think every time we stopped to charge the car we made some questionable food choices! But we also had a fantastic time intermittently watching a fairly crappy movie in the car and giggling about what would happen if we had to live in one of these wee towns in the middle of nowhere. LOL

Yes! It is a frozen rice pudding on a stick!

We left these where we found them.... 

And these... Since it was well after 1pm, the decision was easy.

The North Platte River is where a half a million of these majestic birds stop to rest on their way north for the summer. They have been doing this for THOUSANDS of years! Nope... no nesting here, it's literally just a stopover. March is peak viewing month and it appears we nailed it this year.

Each night the cranes take to the river. They stay overnight. It's safe and in addition to having a watery boundary between themselves and dry-land-dwellers, they are skittish birds so will take flight en masse if they see/hear/feel a threat. They are not hunted in Nebraska but they are in 17 other states - the threat is legit and not just paranoia!

With that in mind, we arrived at the river quite a bit before the sun came up and sat quietly behind the steel trusses of a historic bridge, wearing dark clothes. Eager to see what we could already hear. Thousands of birds were awake and squawking raucously from sandbars and little islands upstream. 

My camera told me ISO had to be 12800! Yep, the pics are grainy but the alternative is blurry with such long exposure times that would be needed and no tripod. I was using a 600mm lens which doesn't help... or does!

Within the first hour after sunrise, ALL of the birds had taken to the air in search of meadows where they "dance" for each other ... and themselves. They invest a lot into courtship and maintaining the romance in their relationships. :-)

After dancing is done, it's off to the corn fields for snacks. We hit the road in search of food (which is harder to find than you might think in these parts, in off-season) and then went back to our Airbnb for a little nap and recovery time. There were no dull moments!

Back to the cranes...

In the mid-afternoon we headed back out to search for cranes in corn fields, knowing they'd soon take to the skies to visit those meadows once more before landing in the river in that hour leading up to sunset.

We did not find birds in corn fields. Despite consulting the interwebs extensively and following what appeared to be good advice to search north of the river, the fields were empty - unless you count hay bales, the odd lady farmer doing a livestock check and us.  On the bright side, the Tesla had been promised a road trip its entire life and today, it got it's wish. In high clearance mode, Mark drove it up and down dirt county roads that had almost dried out from what looked like a pretty decent downpour and while you may be thinking that Nebraska is essentially flat, I'm here to tell you that it most certainly wasn't in this part of the state!

We found our sedge of Sandhill cranes pretty much near the river where we started at 6am! They were in the meadow... dancing, singing, crowded together looking pretty. And I took 700 pictures to prove it. 

The light was magnificent. We had 10,0000 cranes to ourselves, unless you count the two other couples that came and went during the time Mark and I were perched on the side of the road with cameras... or laying flat in the grass, looking up and feeling the cranes overfly us with their giant beaks, loud wings and spindly legs.

An hour later they were safely back in the river... close enough to be heard but far enough to be hidden from view. The sun had set and it was time for us to motor back to Ogallala for a quick Tesla charge and an outstanding Mexican dinner before calling it a night. 

(We both dreamed that Rusty was sleeping on the bed in Nebraska with us... weird right?)

Sunday. Another early morning but not early enough to catch the birds leaving the river this time. We watched thousands take to the sky and found hundreds in a frosty field near the river just after sunrise. It's ok to go belly down on frozen grass with your lens sticking under a barbed wire fence, spying on skittish birds when you're wearing all your insulated, waterproof gear last used in Antarctica! In fact, it's fun. :-)

What a spectacular weekend. A whirlwind of a time, interspersed with some real estate deals, cheap food, scenic byways, bird cacophony, a cute Airbnb stay and 2000 photographs taken with a heavy camera and arms now so sore I was tempted to chew them off!

As usual, the whole darn thing would never have been so fun if Mark had not agreed to once again bear witness to (and mightily support) a Dallice Bucket List adventure.