Sandhill Cranes!

Driving along this road we almost always watch for Sandhill Cranes; this is the area where we've seen them most often.  They've become part of our personal bird-watching habit, and if you see one close they are certainly spectacular birds.  And if you hear one they're even more notable.

This was our first view of the cranes.  Can you spot them, large brown birds at least 3-4 feet tall?  Do you have eyes as sharp as Mrs. F.G.?

This cropped picture might help you.

And here they are.  These two photos are cropped from the first picture, just for your viewing enjoyment.  Just for my own enjoyment, I went back over our past photos of the cranes, to gather together the times we've seen these birds.

We saw a pair near here just two years ago, when the soybeans were growing well, slowly working their way through the field eating what grubs they could find.  This was late June, 2020.

Perhaps our most interesting sighting was 10 years ago, when we saw this pair with a young one, a little later in the season, and further west on the same road.  Can you see the tiny light brown chick, in between the two adult birds?  This was in mid-May, 2012.

And of course there was our spectacular sighting of Sandhill Cranes gathering together for migration in November.  We estimated that we saw close to 2000 all within one large concession, feeding on leftover corn in the fields.  From what I've read they return to specific sites year after year to gather into larger flocks during migration, and this field appears to be just such a site, about an hour east of here.

And here's back to the pair we sighted on Sunday, the best phot I could get this time without cropping til it gets blurry.