Sandhill Cranes
Sunrise on the Platte River in late March: no better time and no better place for a birder, especially when, as this year, you can be out there in a jacket!
Huge flocks of Sandhill Cranes had met us, right on cue, as we arrived in Grand Island Sunday afternoon, and it took us several hours to drive as far west as Fort Kearny, pausing a couple of times a mile to scan the hordes for black necks or white bodies. We found no rare cranes (somebody in the van said something about needles in haystacks or something like that…), but we did get to enjoy an arriving Loggerhead Shrike and a few waterfowl, including the first Ross’s Goose of the trip. Western Meadowlarks and Harris’s Sparrows were audible and visible all along the roadside, and a well-timed bathroom stop produced (I almost wrote “flushed”!) a Great Horned Owl near Kearney. (As a native Nebraskan, I’m proud to know the orthographic difference between Fort Kearny and the town of Kearney).
On a top-secret tip, we decided to spend the evening at the pedestrian bridge at the state park. No big white birds, alas, but the spectacle of many thousands of Sandhill Cranes coming in to the river more than made up for it, especially when a Bald Eagle drifted past, creating a literal uproar that echoed in our ears for hours after.
Monday morning found us at the Alda bridge in the dark, waiting for the sunrise and for the birds. The noise level told us that we had found a large roost, and as the sky brightened, we could see that it was massive indeed.
Impossible to count the birds, but we guessed 50,000 at this bend of the river, and I would not be surprised to hear that the actual figure was twice that.
For some reason, the cranes were slow to leave the roost, and we watched them lift off by the hundreds rather than by the thousands, prolonging the show and giving us chances to watch Greater Yellowlegs and Wilson’s Snipe on the river, while Harris’s Sparrows and both Eastern and Western Meadowlarks sang from the edges. It was one of the most exciting, and one of the most comfortable, dawn cranewatches I’d ever been privileged to be a part of, and it sets a high standard to reach for on next year’s tour!
