Sandhill Cranes!
Monday 17 November 2014
21 °F
Hello everybody and welcome back!
Sorry I have not posted in a long time; it seems as though all of my academic and musical obligations have simply gobbled up all of my free time in the past month or two!
A couple days every March and November of each year, large flocks of Sandhill Cranes pass over Oak Park, IL on their way either up north to the taiga zone where they breed or south to the milder subtropics.
Today, a blustery 21-degree overcast November day, the coldest day of the season so far, a group of 40 of these majestic birds passed overhead, trumpeting their amazing calls all the while. I managed to snap one photo of this spectacle:
While certainly not a life bird, these awe-inspiring creatures are certainly quite a sight to see in migration! Even though I only had 40 above my house in inland Oak Park, Illinois, counts of up to nearly 5000 individual cranes were observed on the Lake Michigan lakefront today, wow!
Stay tuned, because recently I have gotten quite a few trips lined up for me for the next few years:
Spring 2015: Southeast Arizona (tentative)
Summer 2015: Costa Rica!
Summer 2015: New York, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Washington DC, & Idaho
Summer 2016: Israel & Palestine (tentative)
Good birding,
Henry
World Life List: 703 Species (no life birds today)
