Hey all!
Surprised to hear from me so soon? It’s Crane Season again!… Wait… it’s not March!
It may not be March or the spring crane migration, but what goes up (north) must come down (south). It’s the fall crane migration! Cranes are leaving their breeding grounds up north with their new families and are flying down south to their wintering grounds before they come back through in the spring for the infamous Crane Season!
If you remember last fall, you might recall hearing that we had a very peculiar fall migration, with tens of thousands of Sandhill Cranes staying with us on the Platte for months into the depths of (a mild) winter. That unique season prompted us to start fall Sandhill Crane aerial surveys this year to try to track the fall Sandhill Crane migration better.
Well… this year has also been unique so far. The cranes are taking their time. We’ve seen occasional flocks of a few hundred flying over and a few small groups roosting on the river for one night. However, numbers do seem low for this time of year. This is likely because the entire migratory corridor has been unseasonably warm, so the cranes likely aren’t feeling pressured to migrate to avoid colder temperatures in the north just yet.
So, what about these flights? What have we seen? What are they telling us so far? We have flown the last two Tuesdays and have not seen a single Sandhill Crane from the sky. This isn’t completely surprising, as the few groups we’ve seen from the ground aren’t sticking around for very long, if at all, which is fairly consistent with behaviors in the fall. Whooping Cranes have experienced a similar delay in their migration, but there have been a few reported in the Platte Valley so far.* However, we’ll see how well our new surveys capture the variety that comes with fall migration, and we’ll keep you updated along the way.
Till next time,
*If you see a Whooping Crane, please respect the birds and keep your distance, as it is against the law to disturb them. Report the sighting at the link below: https://outdoornebraska.gov/about/give-back/help-wildlife/community-science/whooping-crane-migration-rename/