Sandhill Crane
Grus Canadensis
By Tom Dickson
Revered in Asia for their elegance and beauty, cranes have a small but growing following in North America. Dignified and stately in flight, the sandhill crane also moves on land with grace and agility. Most spectacular is the bird’s mating dance, in which two cranes bow, leap, hop, skip, and pirouette like avian ballet dancers. A nervous bird with spotting-scope eyesight, the crane prefers open areas where it can keep watch for coyotes, its primary predator.
The sandhill is in the same family as the whooping crane, today one of the world’s rarest birds.
Appearance
Sandhill cranes are big wading birds with long legs, a long neck, and a rapier-shaped
bill. They stand four feet tall and can stretch their wings out six feet
wide from tip to tip. These slender birds are mostly gray except for the
forehead, which is bright red, and their black legs and bill. They weigh
seven to eight pounds.
Sound
There’s no mistaking the call of the sandhill crane. There’s
also no way to accurately describe it. Sandhills makes a loud, rolling, musical
rattle that can be heard from more than a mile away. One nature writer compares
it to the sound of “fingernails drawn along the teeth of several combs,” undulating
up and down and amplified by the birds’ exceptionally long windpipe.
Food
Omnivores, cranes will eat anything from berries and grains to snakes and
amphibians. Even mice, voles, and other small mammals are sometimes found
in the stomachs of sandhill cranes.
Reproduction
The crane nest is usually a simple affair consisting of a shallow depression
in soil lined with dry grass and feathers. The female lays two spotted,
gray-brown eggs. Both parents incubate the eggs by trading places throughout
the day. The eggs hatch in 30 days. Because the sandhill crane produces
relatively few young and doesn’t begin breeding until age eight,
it takes a long time for populations to recover from a drop in numbers.
Habitat
Generally, sandhill cranes seek out wet areas where they can find food and
avoid predators. In Montana, sandhills nest in wet meadows and other wetlands
and near streams and beaver ponds.
Status and management in Montana
Sandhills are counted each September in western Montana before the birds
migrate south. This and similar surveys in Idaho, Utah and Wyoming indicate
that the Rocky Mountain population contains roughly 20,000 cranes. The
breeding range of the Rocky Mountain population had dropped to 150 to 200
breeding pairs in the 1940s due to unregulated hunting.
Now enough sandhill cranes nest in and migrate through Montana to allow a regulated hunting season on the birds each fall. Roughly 500 hunters receive permits each year. The cranes are hunted by placing decoys in feeding fields, similar to a technique used to hunt geese.
Where to see them
Sandhill cranes are a common sight in eastern Montana during the fall migration.
Skeins of migrating birds pass overhead throughout the region in October,
enjoyed by photographers, hunters, and wildlife watchers.
In western Montana, one of the top spots for viewing cranes up close is
the Red Rock Lakes National Wildlife Refuge in southeastern Beaverhead County,
50 miles west of Yellowstone National Park. In April, the birds arrive from
their wintering grounds in southern New Mexico, and they stay until heading
south in September. Look for cranes along creeks, wetlands, and open grassy
areas. Get more information by calling (406) 276-3536 or on-line at www.gorp.com/gorp/resources/us_nwr/mt_redro.htj
(Note: this is a commercial web site. The wildlife refuge’s official
site was inaccessible when this issue went to press.)
[ BACK TO TOP ]