The sandhill crane (Grus canadensis) is a species of large crane of North America and extreme northeastern Siberia. The common name of this bird refers to habitat like that at the Platte River, on the edge of Nebraska's Sandhills on the American Plains. This is the most important stopover area for the
nominotypical subspecies, the lesser sandhill crane (Grus canadensis canadensis), with up to 450,000 of these birds
migrating through annually.
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Sandhill cranes have one of the longest fossil histories of any extant bird. A 10-million-year-old crane fossil from Nebraska is said to be of this species, but this may be from a prehistoric relative or the direct ancestor of sandhill cranes and not belong in the genus Grus. The oldest unequivocal sandhill crane fossil is 2.5 million years old,older by half than the earliest remains of most living species of birds, primarily found from after the Pliocene/Pleistocene boundary some 1.8 million years ago. Uploaded on Apr 5, 2010 Nearly 500,000 cranes migrate each spring through Nebraska and spend about 30 days along approximately 70 miles of the Platte River. At dusk, the cranes gather on sandbars in the Platte to roost for the night. This video footage was taken from a blind at the Rowe Sanctuary near Gibbon, Neb. -- the Rowe Sanctuary also feature a Crane Cam on their Web site at http://www.rowesanctuary.org/. For more information about crane viewing in Nebraska, go to http://www.ngpc.state.ne.us/wildlife/...
Some 10,000 elegant sandhill cranes stop at the Jasper-Pulaski Fish and Wildlife Area in Indiana each fall while migrating south. Many thanks to Stephen Weddle for sharing with us this stunning photo of one of them, which he took while visiting that wildlife area this month. Sandhill cranes mate for life, some staying with the same partner year-round for more than two decades, and they're famous for their courtship dancing (Click Here) Scientists say they're also one of the oldest known bird species—at least 2.5 million years, based on fossil evidence found in Florida. As of a few days ago, Stephen says, the 2016 autumn crane tally at Jasper-Pulaski was at 4,526...and counting.
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(If you enjoy our Facebook posts and want to see more, please take a few seconds to "like" our page. You can find it by clicking on "The Naturalist's Notebook" above. We're excited that so many thousands of you are tuned in to nature and science. Thank you—and feel free to pass the word to others!) thenaturalistsnotebook.com is our website.
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