PHOTOS BY GARRY BRANDENBURG — Sandhill Cranes will soon descend upon the Platte River valley of Nebraska. The time frame is always from late March through mid April, and the locations can be along the hundred mile segment of the Platte between Kearney and North Platte. Over one million Sandhill Cranes will funnel into those river bottom lands of shallow water, scoured sandbars and nearby grain fields of corn and wheat as they search for waste grain to feed upon. This spectacular wildlife migration is an awesome sight. Central Nebraska is not that far away for Iowans wishing to experience, even if just once, what a sky full of cranes looks like. You will be amazed — try it, you will like it.
Sandhill cranes (grus canadensis) keep to a schedule that is as old as the ages, and central Nebraska is where the bulk of the population will funnel into beginning just one month from now. It is an epic natural history occurrence whereby over one million sandhill cranes will assemble to rest, to feed, and to gain endurance for the second half of their long distance flights into the upper Midwest, Canada, Alaska and even eastern Siberia.
This winter, those cranes are resting and enjoying warmer weather in locations in Mexico, Arizona, New Mexico and southwest Texas. Slowly and inevitably as the sun’s power increases for the northern hemisphere, as day lengths grow longer, cranes will respond to the urge to migrate over ancient aerial pathways, and the cranes will begin to assemble in huge concentrations all along the mile wide and six inches deep Platte River’s braided sand bar riddled channel.
I have seen this fantastic spectacle of migration with my own eyes. I have tried to capture the essence of this event with a camera and long lens. While one can try to document hundreds of thousands of cranes as they move out toward picked grain fields each early morning and return at sunset each evening, one also soon realizes the futility of thinking this migration event can be wrapped up in several thousand images or videos.
Try as we may, nature wins this contest hands down, but our experience is not wasted. You will be able to see, and listen to the haunting raspy trilling calls of numerous cranes all talking at once and marvel at this migration mystery.
Many avid bird watchers have already made hotel and motel reservations in central Nebraska for their planned visit to see the cranes, and if you are so inclined to conduct serious crane watching, photographic blind reservations can also be arranged. On some of these adventures, your guide will take you out to the blind well before sunrise where you will stay all day. Your guide only comes to get you later that evening well after dark.
All your food and water and warm clothes must be packed and brought with you for this all day stay. The upside of such an excursion is being in the middle of thousands of sandhill cranes as they walk about, rest, talk and dance with potential mates just outside your small viewing windows of the blind.
Sandhill cranes are among the oldest living birds on earth. Fossil crane skeletons, very similar to today’s sandhill, have been exhumed from the volcanic ash of northeast Nebrasks’s Ashfall Fossil Beds State Park. The date of volcanic ash deposits at this site is 11.3 million years ago, the aftermath of a volcano eruption in what is now southwest Idaho.
Prevailing winds blew volcanic ash eastward, filling the sky at that time with choking super fine dust-like particles of microscopic glass. That ash was breathed in by any land-based creature, great or small, and suffocation resulted. The Cornell Lab of Ornithology has documented the earliest crane fossil estimated to be 2.5 million years old, and that fossil came from the Macasphalt Shell Pit in Florida.
Sandhill cranes are tall, lanky birds. They stand three to four feet tall and weigh about six to 12 pounds, and wingspan is between six and seven feet. They live anywhere from twenty to forty years, and their omnivore status means the foods they select depend upon availability and location.
Waste grain in crop fields works just fine each spring to add nutrients and health for their upcoming nesting season. Grains may be 90 percent of their food intake, and other foods include fleshy tubers, grubs, insects, earthworms, snails, amphibians, small reptiles and small rodents. All these foods are needed to ensure good healthy body condition for the time when they do arrive at nesting grounds.
Sandhill Cranes have light gray plumage. Adults have a reddish top crown, and juvenile cranes are rusty-reddish brown colored until they molt and grow flight feathers before their first migration to wintering grounds. Adult birds can fly at 25 to 35 miles per hour and make a 200 to 300 mile leg each day, more if a tailwind assists them. Thermal updrafts and southerly winds can add many miles to a day’s journey.
There are subspecies of sandhill cranes. Not all cranes make up the epic huge populations that pass through Nebraska. Ornithologists and taxonomists know of at least five, or perhaps six subspecies. There are non-migratory sandhills in Florida, Mississippi and in Cuba.
Central Iowa gets visitors and summer nesting cranes each year. Otter Creek Marsh in Tama County has sandhill cranes every year for at least the last four decades. A few sandhills return like clockwork to the private wetlands just northwest of Marshalltown along the backwaters and old river channels of the Iowa between Albion and Marshalltown. So without traveling to Nebraska, this scribe has been fortunate to obtain sandhill images every year in the Mann Marsh complex south of Albion.
If, however, you want to see and hear the biggest and best of sandhill migration spectacles, do travel to central Nebraska between late Marsh and mid April. Mother Nature puts on a great show that is hard to miss. Enjoy another fantastic adventure in the wonderful world of the outdoors.
Wildlife migrations come in various flavors and locations. Across the globe are examples of everything from turtles, snakes, and insects like the monarch butterfly, to big hairy critters like elk, mule deer, or pronghorns, all in the American West. In the Canadian Arctic are caribou herds that seek out tundra lichens and mosses over great distances.
Closer to home we are all familiar to one extent or another with birds of all sizes. Big birds like waterfowl — duck and geese — come to mind, and in Africa, many documentary films have been made of Blue Wildebeests, over one million strong, migrating from areas of good grazing to areas where rainy seasons have allowed grasses to cycle through. Those wildebeest grazers follow a 500 mile long route and must cross the Mara River in East Africa’s Serengeti. Crocodiles wait patiently to pick off just enough to meet their life needs. No matter what the obstacles, the wildebeests must answer the call to move locations in rhythm with vegetation responses to rain. The topic of wildlife migrations can and has filled many books and wildlife research manuscripts. Mother Nature knows, and we humans can only hope to delve into a deeper understanding of why wildlife move long distances.
Fishing fans who like walleye catching in Iowa’s Great Lakes know that their season will end soon. On Feb. 15, fishing ends at Spirit Lake, East and West Okoboji. Fishing season reopens on May 7. During this hiatus of no line fishing, DNR fisheries crews will begin preparations for and netting of walleye for hatchery-raised fish from eggs through the fry and fingerling stages. It is a busy time for hatchery staff at several locations in Iowa. The sciences of fish and fish management are entire specialty vocations for biologists and fisheries workers of all kinds.
I am glad those folks are dedicated to their specialty. Fish hatcheries are located at Big Spring, Decorah, Fairport, Manchester, Mount Ayr, Rathbun and Spirit Lake.
Mark the date of Feb. 24. For this region of Central Iowa, Otter Creek Lake Park’s nature center will be the location for another state-wide public meeting regarding hunting, trapping and potential rule changes for 2022 and beyond. This is a town hall style meeting where local staff will provide updates on the recently completed fall 2021 seasons, and discuss options of potential adjustments to rules for the fall 2022 seasons.
The time for the meeting at Otter Creek Lake Park, located northeast of Toledo at 2283 Park Road, will be 6:30 p.m. Comments offered from the public at this meeting are required by law before drafts and final rules can be voted on by the DNR commissioners later this summer.
A five station clay bird shoot is scheduled for Feb. 19, this coming Saturday, at the Marshall County Chapter of the Izaak Walton League. Five stations of 10 clay birds per shooter will be arranged, and the cost is $20. Winter weather conditions are likely, so come prepared for whatever Mother Nature offers up on that day. A bonfire will help people get warm.
Quote to note: “They say the world belongs to those who get up early. That is not true. The world belongs to those who are happy to get up.”
— Monica Vitti, actor
Garry Brandenburg is the retired director of the Marshall County Conservation Board. He is a graduate of Iowa State University with a BS degree in Fish & Wildlife Biology. Contact him at
P.O. Box 96Albion, IA 50005
-
- PHOTOS BY GARRY BRANDENBURG — Sandhill Cranes will soon descend upon the Platte River valley of Nebraska. The time frame is always from late March through mid April, and the locations can be along the hundred mile segment of the Platte between Kearney and North Platte. Over one million Sandhill Cranes will funnel into those river bottom lands of shallow water, scoured sandbars and nearby grain fields of corn and wheat as they search for waste grain to feed upon. This spectacular wildlife migration is an awesome sight. Central Nebraska is not that far away for Iowans wishing to experience, even if just once, what a sky full of cranes looks like. You will be amazed — try it, you will like it.
