After doing a little internet research, I figured the best time to view them would be either at sunrise (when they fly off en masse and then scatter to find food) or near dusk (when they make their way back together to spend the night).
Well, it was too late to try to catch them at sunrise, but I talked Greg into taking off early today so we could all drive the hour south of here and just maybe catch a glimpse of them before nightfall.
We had no idea what to expect -- and weren't going to be terribly disappointed if we didn't see anything. The directions I could find on-line instructed us to take Spring Street north out of Brownstown and after crossing railroad tracks and a bridge we were to just drive around out in the country side and watch for activity in the fields. Not real promising sounding to us townies, but we decided to give it a try. I'm so glad we did!
These pictures are the best ones we snapped on our little digital camera and while I'm pleased we were able to catch some action, these photos just don't give you any picture at all of the thousands of Sandhill Cranes throughout the country side in this area. The birds tended to stay away from the heavily traveled roads, and even along the less busy roads (where we snapped these pictures) they stayed back quite a ways. Off in the distance one could see these birds massed together foraging in the fields and sometimes 25-50 at a time would fly off to "safer" areas. And to think this was a small sampling of what these gatherings can look like.
It was a fun way to spend a 55 degreed February Friday afternoon and we saw something we'd never seen before. Next trip we take the camera with the telephoto lense!
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