Hindsight:
After enjoying our Father’s Day brunch we piled into Gloria and Les's Saturn and went for a drive. We soon lost count of the deer and antelope around every corner as we meandered along the back roads surrounding White Sulphur Springs. Then we noticed these big birds. Our species guesses ranged from Australian emus to wild turkeys. Standing or laying down, they were just far enough off the road in the grassy fields that we couldn’t get a good picture with our camera but eventualy we did see their red heads with the binoculars. After we got back home, we did some research and found these pictures on line. We felt very fortunate to have spotted several pair of them on our drive.
Standing four feet tall and weighing about 7-8 pounds, Sandhill Cranes have a wingspan of six feet or more. These graceful birds are best known for their mating dance in which male and female bow to each other, leap, hop, skip and pirouette like avian ballet dancers. The birds are counted every September in Montana before they begin their southern migration. This and similar surveys in Idaho and Wyoming and Utah indicate there are 20,000 cranes in the Rocky Mountain population.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment