About 750,000 sandhill cranes descend along a sixty-mile stretch of the Platte River in Nebraska each March, pausing on their northward migration.
The annual great migration had begun. Over 750,000 sandhill cranes had descended along a sixty-mile stretch of Nebraska’s Platte River for an extended refueling stop between their winter grounds in Mexico and Texas and their summer nesting grounds in northern Canada, Alaska and Siberia. And with them came the human flock, upwards of 30,000 tourists—affectionately called “craniacs”—who land each March near Kearney, NE, to watch the birds dance, strut, and fill the sky twice daily with their silhouettes and ratchety calls.
As a pink and orange corner of the horizon gradually spread against the cobalt blue of the pre-dawn sky, Dianne and I gathered with dozens of other curiosity-seekers at a viewing deck near Kearney, watching as the cranes prepared to take flight from their overnight roosts on the Platte. Before takeoff, the sky was already filled with the sound of their gathering excitement.
Their commingled calls sound like a mass of happy bullfrogs in a pond. Or like ratcheting flywheels. Others call it bugling, trumpeting, rattling, or like the sound of a wooden mallet scraping across a washboard musical instrument. Put all of these together and you approach the chatter of the cranes calling to their life-long mates and yearling offspring as they prepare for liftoff.
And then they take flight even before the sun rises, first a few brave families, then a line or two of followers, and finally great flocks (called “sedges”) that blacken the sky. They rise with couple of twists above the river before passing over our heads en route to their daytime feeding grounds. By day they’ll break out in smaller groups of a hundred or so, feasting in area farm fields on corn dropped from last year’s harvest and bugs and worms emerging from the thawing soil.
By day, we drove the back-country lanes for close-up views of the cranes in the fields. Occasionally we’d catch a crane dancing, strutting, or coming in for a landing with legs outstretched. The gray-colored cranes in the distance, bent over while pecking for food, looked like field stones.
At dusk, the cranes reverse the process, blackening the sky again and returning en masse to the river for the night. Night cams capture the birds huddled in the dark by the thousands, standing less than a wingspan apart, their feet draped in an inch or two of water or roosting on small islands that rise a few inches above the river.
Sandhill cranes stand three to four feet tall with six-foot wingspans. Life-long mates will strut, jump, and dance for each other in choreographies as individualized as snowflakes. They’ll stretch their necks together in unison. Their ratchety calls, identifiable to mate and offspring, resonate from a trachea that coils like a French horn from their throat to their sternum. Youngsters join in with a higher-pitched peep. Living about 25 years and pairing up around age three, crane-mates will lead their one or two annual offspring (called “colts”) south and then back north before chasing them out on their own at the conclusion of the colts’ first year. Over a lifetime, the paired mates will teach a couple of decades’ worth of colts what to eat, how to dance, and how to fly the hourglass route.
With their gray feathers, sandhill cranes are less colorful than some of their cousin species from across the globe, but they often “paint” themselves a rusty orange with the residue of grasses they drag across their bodies for increased camouflage and insect repellent. Their heads bear a distinctive patch of red skin they’ll enlarge to tell others to back off.
While some sandhill cranes’ flyways lead east of the Mississippi River through Wisconsin and Indiana, 80% of sandhills use the hourglass-shaped south-to-north route that lands them on the Platte River for three to four weeks in March to regain about 20% of their weight before resuming their journey.
The Platte River is the key. The shallow, braided Platte—often less than a foot deep—is perfect for slurping up crustaceans and sleeping one-or-two-legged in crowded broods. But the wetlands hosting the cranes were originally wider and covered a longer swath of river. Decades of upriver irrigation have drastically reduced the Platte’s flow by 70% from pre-settlement days. Wetland drainage has narrowed the river from a twisty mile’s width to a mere 500 feet in many locations. Only 10% of original wetland meadows remain along the river. Overhunting as well as similar habitat degradation in their winter and summer grounds drove the species nearly to extinction by the 1960s.
Since then, however, sandhill cranes have trumpeted a remarkable comeback. Restoration efforts by area environmental groups like the Crane Trust and the Audubon Society’s Rowe Sanctuary have restored portions of the Platte to more crane-friendly conditions. Sandhill cranes once again number more than a million in North America.
Established in 1974, The Rowe Sanctuary covers and protects 3000 acres of river bottom and surrounding habitat. In one restoration approach, for example, Sanctuary personnel strip the river’s sandbars of vegetation in the off-season. Permanent vegetation raises the sandbars higher above the river, channelizing and deepening the flow and making it harder for cranes to roost in the water come the following March. Shorn of vegetation, the bald sandbars remain low to the river and provide more available roosting space.
The Crane Trust likewise works to restore sections of the Platte to pre-settlement standards, which includes maintaining the health of bordering prairies. Bison graze the restored grasslands along the river that provide habitat to other prairie mammals and birds as well.
Having returned to the same viewing pavilion at dusk, Dianne and I, along with the other viewers, pivoted from our morning roost locations and watched the sun set to the west. The cranes’ bullfrog ratchets, rattles, and bugles were already filling the sky. Then came the cranes again in black droves, returning from the fields, circling overhead, and scouting out their perfect landing place in or alongside the Platte to roost for another night.
June 2025
As a pink and orange corner of the horizon gradually spread against the cobalt blue of the pre-dawn sky, Dianne and I gathered with dozens of other curiosity-seekers at a viewing deck near Kearney, watching as the cranes prepared to take flight from their overnight roosts on the Platte. Before takeoff, the sky was already filled with the sound of their gathering excitement.
Their commingled calls sound like a mass of happy bullfrogs in a pond. Or like ratcheting flywheels. Others call it bugling, trumpeting, rattling, or like the sound of a wooden mallet scraping across a washboard musical instrument. Put all of these together and you approach the chatter of the cranes calling to their life-long mates and yearling offspring as they prepare for liftoff.
And then they take flight even before the sun rises, first a few brave families, then a line or two of followers, and finally great flocks (called “sedges”) that blacken the sky. They rise with couple of twists above the river before passing over our heads en route to their daytime feeding grounds. By day they’ll break out in smaller groups of a hundred or so, feasting in area farm fields on corn dropped from last year’s harvest and bugs and worms emerging from the thawing soil.
By day, we drove the back-country lanes for close-up views of the cranes in the fields. Occasionally we’d catch a crane dancing, strutting, or coming in for a landing with legs outstretched. The gray-colored cranes in the distance, bent over while pecking for food, looked like field stones.
At dusk, the cranes reverse the process, blackening the sky again and returning en masse to the river for the night. Night cams capture the birds huddled in the dark by the thousands, standing less than a wingspan apart, their feet draped in an inch or two of water or roosting on small islands that rise a few inches above the river.
Sandhill cranes stand three to four feet tall with six-foot wingspans. Life-long mates will strut, jump, and dance for each other in choreographies as individualized as snowflakes. They’ll stretch their necks together in unison. Their ratchety calls, identifiable to mate and offspring, resonate from a trachea that coils like a French horn from their throat to their sternum. Youngsters join in with a higher-pitched peep. Living about 25 years and pairing up around age three, crane-mates will lead their one or two annual offspring (called “colts”) south and then back north before chasing them out on their own at the conclusion of the colts’ first year. Over a lifetime, the paired mates will teach a couple of decades’ worth of colts what to eat, how to dance, and how to fly the hourglass route.
With their gray feathers, sandhill cranes are less colorful than some of their cousin species from across the globe, but they often “paint” themselves a rusty orange with the residue of grasses they drag across their bodies for increased camouflage and insect repellent. Their heads bear a distinctive patch of red skin they’ll enlarge to tell others to back off.
While some sandhill cranes’ flyways lead east of the Mississippi River through Wisconsin and Indiana, 80% of sandhills use the hourglass-shaped south-to-north route that lands them on the Platte River for three to four weeks in March to regain about 20% of their weight before resuming their journey.
The Platte River is the key. The shallow, braided Platte—often less than a foot deep—is perfect for slurping up crustaceans and sleeping one-or-two-legged in crowded broods. But the wetlands hosting the cranes were originally wider and covered a longer swath of river. Decades of upriver irrigation have drastically reduced the Platte’s flow by 70% from pre-settlement days. Wetland drainage has narrowed the river from a twisty mile’s width to a mere 500 feet in many locations. Only 10% of original wetland meadows remain along the river. Overhunting as well as similar habitat degradation in their winter and summer grounds drove the species nearly to extinction by the 1960s.
Since then, however, sandhill cranes have trumpeted a remarkable comeback. Restoration efforts by area environmental groups like the Crane Trust and the Audubon Society’s Rowe Sanctuary have restored portions of the Platte to more crane-friendly conditions. Sandhill cranes once again number more than a million in North America.
Established in 1974, The Rowe Sanctuary covers and protects 3000 acres of river bottom and surrounding habitat. In one restoration approach, for example, Sanctuary personnel strip the river’s sandbars of vegetation in the off-season. Permanent vegetation raises the sandbars higher above the river, channelizing and deepening the flow and making it harder for cranes to roost in the water come the following March. Shorn of vegetation, the bald sandbars remain low to the river and provide more available roosting space.
The Crane Trust likewise works to restore sections of the Platte to pre-settlement standards, which includes maintaining the health of bordering prairies. Bison graze the restored grasslands along the river that provide habitat to other prairie mammals and birds as well.
Having returned to the same viewing pavilion at dusk, Dianne and I, along with the other viewers, pivoted from our morning roost locations and watched the sun set to the west. The cranes’ bullfrog ratchets, rattles, and bugles were already filling the sky. Then came the cranes again in black droves, returning from the fields, circling overhead, and scouting out their perfect landing place in or alongside the Platte to roost for another night.
June 2025
Sandhill cranes, with their signature red heads, feast on invertebrates and leftover corn in area fields by day.
The sandhill cranes regain 20% of their body weight foraging during their month-long migration layover along the Platte River.
Cranes set down their landing gear as they move from field to field by day.
At sunrise the cranes depart en masse from the Platte River and return at sunset.