Unison Call

One of my favorite sounds in the world. I saw this pair of Sandill Cranes while participating in the International Crane Foundations annual crane count last Saturday. I had been hearing this pair calling from the site adjacent to the one I was counting on. When moving from one location to another, I spotted them and watched them for a while, hoping that they would call again. That's the male on the right and the female on the left.

A little blurry because it was taken at extreme zoom (434 - 35mm equiv.) and hand held with the camera pushed against the top of my open car window. I don't think they would have tolerated my opening the door and setting up my tripod.

Here's the ICF site if you are interested.
http://www.savingcranes.org/

That is one bird I have never truely seen! I have seen a colony of feral common cranes a few years in a row in southern NJ that may have bred with a sandhill, but never a true sandhill crane :( That's a great shot for the conditions.

Way to go to get the shot Chunk.
Cheers,
Tim

Quote:

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Originally Posted by paulnj

That is one bird I have never truely seen! I have seen a colony of feral common cranes a few years in a row in southern NJ that may have bred with a sandhill, but never a true sandhill crane :( That's a great shot for the conditions.

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Here's an interesting bird nerd factoid from the ICF site. I don't know if that's a true fact.
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Fun Fact
A Miocene crane fossil, thought to be about ten million years old, was found in Nebraska and is structurally identical to the modern Sandhill crane, making it the oldest known bird species still surviving!
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The emu has been resident in Australia at least 80 million years ;)

I also think the Kiwi of New Zealand is extremely old too, considering it was once of Australia, but left via a land bridge so they think.