Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire Greater Sandhill Crane Score for Cookie - 3 pics

Great pictures as always. Thanks

Cookie sure does have some patience.

Some years back a well-meaning person in Texas picked up an injured great egret (heron) from a roadside ditch. One strike with open beak, the egret damaged both his eyes.

Beautiful, thank you.

Birdwatcher:

Grad school buddy had a similar experience but no permanent damage. It nailed him right between the eyes, but his comment was it could have caused significant damage given the impact.

Cool pics! Thanks for sharing!

Illegal to shoot here or I would.

Youngest son went to school at Texas Tech University in Lubbock. The sheer amount of those Sand Hill cranes in the flyways was unbelievable. When the sky was clear you could hear them but were so high they were often hard to see. But when cloudy and much lower sounded almost otherworldly. They were excellent table fare.

Birdy, I occasionally see a smaller snow white crane like bird in our flooded pastures in summer. I have yet to get a picture of one as sightings are rare and distant. They appear smaller than a blue heron.

I know it is hardly fair to ask without a photo. I assume a "Snowy Egret" It appears their range does extend into the lower Boise Valley.

Comments?

Pretty darn awesome

I see huge flocks of sandhills in eastern MT.
I have never seen one in western WA.

Really cool pictures.

Sandhills have become very common here West and North of Boise. It is common to see a couple hundred grazing in a pasture. Not sure what they are feeding on, but they will return day after day. And of course, just like geese, or ducks, they love last years corn fields before they get plowed under.

They wheel over the house (just out of shotgun range, if we had a season) in late March and early April a dozen at a time for an hour or more each morning just after sunrise making a hell of a racket.

I was delivering bulls in central SD this spring and came across about a 15 mile stretch that every corn field had cranes in them. Thousands and thousands of them. Never in my life have I witnessed that. Incredible. Must've hit the migration just right.

We have a few common egrets about. Maybe 30 inches tall. The chicken size cattle egrets are extremely rare with maybe one every ten years or so.

Common variety


We do get hundreds of lesser sandhills for about a month each spring. They do no nest here, however, venturing I think up into the artic circle realm. No hunting seasons on cranes, and they rarely stop on their fall runs anyway.

Great pics!
Which edition of National Geographic will they appear in?

I love cranes. Asia and Africa have some pretty ones!

My pics aren't Cookie quality, but this one is from Ngorogoro Caldera - yellow crowned crane?

Yeah, Asia and Africa sure do have cool stuff .

And good pics there las!