Tuesday afternoon my ears detected an old familiar sound. It was the unmistakable warble of cranes above. As I gazed up into the hazy blue March sky I heard another sound-- the raspy screech of an eagle. My eyes immediately spotted the two bald eagles circling, then the cranes appeared much higher, but in the same line of sight. They were riding the early spring thermals in their round and round signature migration flight. It's springtime in Nebraska.

I apologize for the lack of pictures in this blog post. Shamefully, I have no sandhill crane photos in my archives. Years ago, I helped my son produce a documentary about the sandhill cranes' springtime stopover on the Platte River. We spent mornings and evenings in various blinds near Fort Kearny State Park, filming the magnificent birds feeding and dancing in cornfields and sandbars. We even filmed and interviewed other photographers in action. I still remember one Omaha photographer's description of a previous rainy year and his attempt to get a good photo. "I spent three days in the blind taking thousands of pictures of gray birds with a gray background under gray skies," he lamented.

Strangely, I managed to come away from all this with no photos of my own.

Crane experts tell us that there really isn't a connection between the sandhill crane and the Sandhills of Nebraska. Their name derives from their wintering grounds in the Texas sand hills. They fly over the Nebraska Sandhills enroute to their summer nesting grounds from Canada to Russia. The only time that you'll see cranes land in these Sandhills is for a night layover.

I've personally experienced some cranes that took a liking to the Sandhills though. A few years ago we came across a lone sandhill crane feeding among  cattle on the Valentine National Wildlife Refuge on a December muzzle loader hunting trip. It appeared to be in fine health and perfectly content to live with the cows.

Last November we watched a flock of cranes daily pick though a sparse cornfield in the Sandhills of eastern Sheridan County. They seemed to be right at home in the remote hills. Maybe they thought that this looked like their wintering grounds down south...or maybe they were part of the flock that ventures into far eastern Russia to have their young and just needed some extra energy to continue south.

If you get a chance to view the sandhill cranes while they're congregated on the Platte in March and early April, I highly recommend sitting in a blind with binoculars or a camera with lots of zoom. In the evening when the birds return to the river after feeding all day, you will experience a wonder of nature that you'll never forget. If you are not able to see the birds in real life then check out the documentary below. Our son, Mitch, created this film as a teenager.