Photos by Kim and Cindy Risen / www.naturescapenews.com
Stately: Tall and regal in appearance, the Sandhill Crane migrates by the thousands through the Midwest in March. Huge flocks congregate along Nebraska’s Platte River attracting birders from all over the world to view the spectacle.

By Kelley Rizac, coordinator, Nebraska Partnership for All-Bird Conservation

It’s a chilly evening in mid-March, and the air resounds with the haunting cries Sandhill Cranes – hundreds of thousands of them. Flock by flock, the tall, graceful birds arise from the rich Nebraska fields in which they have been foraging to seek nocturnal refuge in the Platte River. Once described by pioneers a “a mile wide and a foot deep”, the shallow water is an ideal resting place, for any predator large enough to take a crane would have to be stealthy indeed to enter the water without being heard by the resting birds. This site is so key to the spring migration of these birds that all 500,000 will pause from their long journey to feed and rest here before continuing on to their Arctic nesting grounds. The Nebraska sky explodes with color as skein upon skein of cranes alights in the river. So it is today as it has been for many thousands of years, though there was a time when that might not have been.

Catch the rest of the story in the March Issue of NatureScape News!        Previous Highlight