Cranes? Yes!

Cranes? Yes. Earl Plato

"What do you think they are?" I received a call in the nineties from Marg Brunning of Willoughby. She and her husband, Paul, believed that they had three Sandhill Cranes resting and eating grasshoppers in an a field down from their farm on Sauer Road. The Brunnings described Sandhill Cranes to me. They knew that they flew with their neck extended unlike our Great Blue Herons. They described the reddish patch on the heads of these huge, gray colored birds.
was excited. Elaine and I hopped into our car and raced down Sodom Road to Sauer Road. We were taken to the area where the cranes had been seen in the open cut field with its scattering of trees. We all agreed that it was unusual that Sandhill Cranes that hatch their young in the Arctic and then fly south to winter in New Mexico, Texas and Florida would be this far east. My Audubon book said that occasionally they are seen as far east as Michigan. Why not here? Just down the road to the west was Willougby Marsh a good place to find food for these wetland birds.
Here in October 2003 Archie from Niagara Falls called me. “Earl, we saw eight Sandhill cranes off Netherby Road. You know where the store is and Schil Road. We saw three in the field and near the woods to the south five more.” Huge birds with red-topped crowns. Big if not bigger than our Great blue herons.