Platte River Cranes

Yesterday’s post featured our encounter with a lone Whooping Crane (Grus americanus). I also took a short video of the whooper, as it rested on the Platte River with thousands of Sandhill Cranes (Grus canadensis). The video was taken pre-dawn, so the electronic noise is evident in the quality. But that’s fine with me … I was able to not only find a “life bird”, but was able to capture some reasonable images, as well as this short video. To check out the video, click on this link:   Whooping Crane video

Meanwhile, let me share an image made shortly after entering the blind. This image was made in near darkness and was made with a time exposure of 0.3 seconds (tripod mounted), so the quality is not very good. But it shows the Sandhill Cranes roosting in their preferred spot, about 6-8 inches of water in the middle of the Platte River. Roosting in this shallow water protects them from potential predators, like coyotes.  As most of this group of cranes were napping, one early riser was wandering around (and causing quite a blur in this long-exposure image!):

Roosting Sandhill Cranes

With the Sandhill Cranes much closer, I shot some video of them, particularly when the birds began to get active and preparing to leave the sanctuary of the Platte River, to feed in the surrounding fields and pastures. If you want to watch the cranes on the Platte River, prior to moving to the nearby fields for foraging, click on this link to a short video I shot on Tuesday morning:  Sandhill Crane video

I’ll post more images of the Sandhill Cranes, in upcoming posts.

 

 

 

 

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