Viewing a Half Million Sandhill Cranes in Nebraska

You read that number right. When I visited Wood River, Nebraska in late March, there were at least almost a half million sandhill cranes in the area. It’s the largest migration of these large birds in the world.

They roost every night on the Platte River from sunset to sunrise, after which they take to the skies to visit the nearby harvested corn fields for grains, insects, small mammals, snails, and reptiles. National Geographic has called this annual migration one of North America’s greatest wildlife phenomena.

I flew from New York City to Dallas and then to nearby Grand Island, Nebraska, which has a population of about 53,000 people. It was an exceedingly friendly town, even if the restaurant options seemed to be a bit sparse. No four-star hotels to be found, but my stay at Marriott’s Springhill Suites was nice enough with a mini-frig and a microwave in my room.

Fossil beds reveal that the cranes have been migrating through this area for ten million years – back when the cranes were of a more prehistoric variety. They stop in Nebraska to rest and increase their body weight so that they can make the long trip to Canada, Alaska, or Siberia in summer, where they breed. (I saw a pair in arctic Canada last August.)

Nebraska’s Crane Trust works hard to preserve the cranes and their habitat. They have managed to band a few cranes with trackers in order to see where they go. At least one of the cranes with this tracker has indeed gone to Siberia. They use a fly-over strategy to count the cranes and estimate their numbers.

There are two types of sandhill cranes – lesser and greater. The difference is in size, but that difference is so slight that it’s hard to tell them apart. About 60% of the cranes in Nebraska are lesser, while the remaining 40% are greater. They start to arrive in mid-February and stay into April with the peak in mid to late March, which is when I opted to go.

Sandhill cranes mate for life, so while in Nebraska, many of the young ones “couple up.” This means you can sometimes see their mating dance among the hordes of birds on the river. They bow to each other and jump in the air.

The Platte River is quite shallow where the cranes roost, so they stand in the water to sleep and make lots of noise until they give over to slumber. There are two large “blinds” set up by the Crane Trust (little buildings with small windows) where people can watch the birds on the river without disturbing them. You see, these cranes are hunted in almost every other state in the U.S., which means they’re very squeamish and easily spooked.

For this reason, it was next to impossible for me to get a closeup of any of the birds with my 250mm camera lens. I probably needed a 1200mm lens for that (hence, the stock photo at the top of this article).

Still, it was thrilling to see and hear such huge flocks of these birds. In the one area of the river where we could view them from the blinds, tens of thousands of them converged. And sure enough, as soon as the sun set, more and more of them started flying in.

For sunrise, we got to the blinds in the dark while the birds were just waking up. We waited very quietly for the sun to rise, and as soon as it did, the birds slowly thinned out on the river and flew away to the fields.

The Crane Trust creates a convoy to go to the blinds for the sunset and sunrise tours. As they arrive on the road, they turn around and drive back toward the other direction so that the headlights won’t bother the birds when it’s time to leave.

The Crane Trust also conducts driving tours in the late morning to see the birds in the fields, but again, you can’t get too close to them without spooking them.

While there, I also got to see about six whooping cranes. Even among the thousands of gray sandhill cranes, they are easy to spot because they’re taller and bright white. We saw three of them in the fields on my driving tour, two in flight, and one on the river.

Whooping cranes are very rare and endangered. There are only 600-700 of them left in the wild. So it was a tremendous privilege to see them. The Crane Trust and others are doing all they can to bring these birds back from the brink of extinction.

At the Crane Trust’s nature center, you can also view their resident bison herd. You can help by donating to the organization, which I found to be run by a lovely group of people, including many volunteers who love the cranes. One of them even has a license plate that says “Craniac.” It’s quite a spectacle to see so many birds in one place. Highly recommended!