Sandhill Mania

The Sandhill Crane is a tall gray bird of open grasslands, meadows, and wetlands. It congregates in huge numbers in migration. I had never been able to get close to one for a decent picture. Having a little point and shoot camera without even a telephoto that is....... Let's go back to the beginning.

I saw my first sandhills back in the 80's & 90's. There were some resident and thousands of migrants in th fall at Crex Meadows state wildlife area in west central Wisconsin. They would occasionally fly over but mostly were seen in the meadows and fields some distance from the road. I have a few mostly fuzzy Echtacrome slides of those.

In the last decade, I would rarely see them flying over as I was in my fishing boat on the Mississippi River. No chance for pictures then either. Finally, in the last few years, since I took up birding and got a Cannon point and shoot digital, I saw tens of thousand spring and fall in the Platte River Valley on our way to visit the grandkids in Colorado.

More recently we took a trip to Milwaukee, with friends John and Joanne, for some German culture.... I mean cooking and beer. On the way home we stopped to look at the famous Horicon marsh. There were sandhills in the picked cornfields all along the way. I was getting closer as this shot out the car window shows.

Finally, we hit the jackpot on our brief Florda vacation. Visiting Mrs T's cousin in Sabastian, we headed into town so she could get some pictures of the brown and white pelicans that hung around the docks. That mission accomplished we left the dock to head across the busy and adjacent main street to do a little mall shopping. It was then that I heard my spouse yell "do you want a picture of some sandhills?" "Ya" I replied looking up. And there they were standing on this grassy traffic island in the middle of the highway we were about to cross. Considering all the bad shots of them I got, all I can say is she is either good or damn lucky!