Tim Frakes Productions Inc. 2019 Sandhill Crane Migration
Channel: Tim Frakes
Date: 2019-03-20

We drove out to Central Nebraska for the Crane Migration along the Platt River.  People come from all over the United States as well as the world to see the migration of an estimated 200,000 Sandhill Cranes as well as the world remaining Whooping Cranes which now number somewhere around 500.

The birds stage and stay for several weeks to fatten up before they fly on up north to the Arctic and Alaska and Canada and as far as Siberia in March.  

It's still snow packed in the Arctic so the birds need to fattened up in Nebraska.  They stay here a couple of weeks and then they head on up north and live off of those fat reserves while they are nesting and then breeding and getting their young colts hatched.

There is something very haunting about the cranes trill. The sound can be heard for for miles and there are times that you can look up in the sky and you can't see the birds, they are so high up on the thermals.  And yet you can hear that trill.  And there is no other animal that makes that noise, but the Sandhill Crane.