What a lift!

Yesterday and today I had to drive to the Raccoon Creek Community site for two different reasons. Yesterday I met with a fellow from the power company, and today I met a class from Indiana State University. Both meetings were fruitful, but that's not the lift I'm referring to.

The "lift" I'm talking about is seeing cranes, sandhill cranes, lots of sandhill cranes.

As we were about to leave the site yesterday we heard the cries of the cranes from as much as a mile away. There were "strings" of them flying nearly overhead. Strings are my term to describe what a line of them looks like from a distance, not quite the same as the "vee's" that geese form. There were about a dozen strings and a large mass of them that had no apparent organization. The larger flock began to circle south of our site, maybe a half mile. They reminded me of a large, shallow, poorly formed tornado.

Cranes fly at very high altitudes, but some of the strings dropped down a bit to see what was going on. In the end, none landed. Instead they eventually formed into larger strings and continued flying to the northwest. We could hear them for a total of maybe ten minutes. What a sight!

But there's more. Today, as I was driving to the site, on a long straight stretch, I looked left to see a few smaller groups flying rather low. Since I had the road to myself I slowed to about 40 miles per hour to watch them flying alongside the car about 50 yards to the south. It was like the documentary about training the cranes to follow an ultra-lite.

Looking out a bit farther I saw about a hundred of them landing in a field, but I couldn't stop on the road to enjoy the sight.

Finally, later today, on the way home, a few dozen more flew overhead about 10 miles southwest of Indianapolis. Kind of makes me want to drive down there again tomorrow.

I found a few pictures of them on the web. Here's one: http://sdakotabirds.com/species_photos/sandhill_crane_1.htm.