Hey all,
It’s a cold start to Crane Season here in Nebraska with multiple days of the highs being in single digits or even negative. You may have noticed this first blog of the season is a little late. In our ideal world, this morning (2/21) was supposed to be our 2 nd flight of the migration. Unfortunately, we have had a difficult time coordinating with pilots this year. Between schedule conflicts, lack of available pilots, subzero temperatures, and plane malfunctions, just to name a few issues we have run into so far, we have not been able to get off the ground yet to get a solid count of the cranes in the river valley. However, we have been able to get “ground counts” (estimates from driving around the river valley) between Highway 281 and the Wood River bridge. We estimate there are 15,000 to 20,000 cranes within this section of the river. We cannot be certain that there aren’t more cranes elsewhere between Chapman and Overton (our normal flight path), but the first arrivals of the season do routinely settle down within a bridge segment or two of the Crane Trust. Additionally, these numbers do reflect the numbers we have been seeing throughout the winter which leads me to think that we might have not had any new migrants arrive yet, or very minimal numbers, which would indicate a late start to migration. This is likely due to the extreme cold temperatures in the region. The cranes here are doing fine. They have been roosting on the solid ice of the river and seemingly finding food in snow covered fields and meadows with their probing beaks. However, next week is nearly a heatwave, swinging to 50-degree weather which will most likely bring an onslaught of cranes and joy to our currently frigid prairies.
We are anxious to get back to our regularly scheduled programing as our crane flights have provided us and partners with valuable data to track changes in the spring crane migration throughout the last two and a half decades. As a bonus we’ve been able to provide this data as a fun way for thousands of crane enthusiasts to follow along with this incredible event year after year. We will keep you all updated as soon as we can get back to the skies! Hopefully very soon as these counts are very important to us here at the Crane Trust!
Till next time,
Bethany Ostrom, Lead Biologist