Last week I was cruising home one afternoon, crossing marshland, when I saw a huuuuuge crane. Snow white, black face, a red flair of color on the head. Easily the biggest crane I’d ever seen! Much bigger than the sandhill cranes I see almost daily.
What’s bigger than a sandhill crane? A whooping crane!!
So I duly reported the sighting to the folks doing the whooping crane monitoring locally. I got an auto mailing note thanking me for the response.
Then this AM, cruising across the same marshland, I saw him again! Just as big, just as white with the red and black color on his head, and this time, standing right next to a sandhill crane, dwarfing him!
And when I opened my morning emails today, I saw I’d gotten another note from the whooping crane folks, this time affirming that yes, they knew of a whooping crane who hangs out in that neck of the woods! His name is Nougat!
I just hope he keeps his distance from the roadway. He was within 100 feet of it each time I saw him.
I hope I see him again, but if not, I feel very lucky to have had not just one, but two sitings of this rare bird species in the wild.
Thanks for the picture Qadgop! Nougat looks like a pretty cool bird.
I’ve been watching the red tail hawks that live in a tree near work. There was one picking up twigs last January. And then there were two flying around together. This week I saw them picking up twigs again. Do bird ever build a second nest?
That’s awesome :). Cranes ( along with Ibis ) are something I’ve only seen once outside of zoos. We get them in the Central Valley in the winter, but for a variety of reasons I’ve always missed them. I need to sign up for one of those reserve tours this year.
We have a big seasonal lake at the bottom of our hill and I’ve been watching it intently, lots of sandhills, geese, and some mute swans earlier in the year, but no whooping cranes.
I’ve only seen them from pretty far away but yes they’re huge. Pretty sparse down here in TX too.
I’ve only seen that single group. It’s near the coast. They hang out in some trees above a pond with some Roseate Spoonbills, which are pretty common here.
Cranes are cool! I love spring, because the Sandhills are flying north.
I love being outside and hearing them coming. The damn things are at least 2 or 3 thousand feet up, and you still hear that guttering, stuttering caw!
I had a meeting with someone a couple of months ago, at an office I’d never been to, and didn’t know anyone there. As I parked my truck, I heard them just overhead. I ran into the lobby, yelled at this old lady receptionist to come outside and see this, quick! And she did!
I apologized to her later for being some random guy in a high-crime area that made her come outside, no questions asked, but she loved it! She had never seen a crane before, and certainly never a couple of hundred squawking and circling overhead.
In summation: Cranes are cool!
