Cranes eyes do not meet during courtship. A young sandhill crane is called a colt. It grows at a rate of approximately an inch a day, reaching full size in nine weeks. They are orange-brown in color for most of their first year, lack a red crown, and make a whistling call. Sandhill cranes can live to the age of 25 years in the wild and longer in captivity.
Cranes have much better hearing and sight capabilities than humans.
There are 15 species of crane currently found around the world, and an additional 36 extinct species recorded by fossil remains. North America has only two native species of crane, the sandhill and the federally endangered whooping crane. Nebraska does not allow hunting of sandhill cranes. An estimated 20,000 cranes are harvested each year by hunters in these states. The population of sandhill cranes in the early 1960's was estimated at 200,000 to 340,000.