Stephanie Croston

    Growing up in south-central Nebraska, I'd heard about Sandhills cranes for as long as I can remember.
     When we went to Kearney for various appointments or for school shopping, we'd see the fields full of them as we drove past, but we were never close enough to see what they looked like. They were simply gray spots in the cornfields.
     And of course, we were usually in enough of a time crunch that we couldn't simply pull off and take a closer look. So we never did.
     Mom decided she wanted to change that and asked if I wanted to come along. Of course, I said yes, so on April 1, off we went.
     We got off the interstate at Gibbon and made our way to Rowe Sanctuary. There we were told about a couple places that we could go where cranes were most likely to be, and we decided to try to find the bridge over the Platte River that we were told about.
     On the way, we saw thousands of cranes in the cornfields, eating the corn left behind after harvest.
     We stopped to take a few pictures, but we were hoping for better around sundown when the cranes roost on the river for the night.
     In watching the cranes as they fed in the fields, I was reminded of Michael Crichton's description of the veliciraptors in Jurassic Park. When he talks about the raptors, I actually picture much larger versions of the cranes.
     We found the bridge and set our strategy for the night, then headed into Kearney to spend the rest of the afternoon.
     Hundreds of thousands of Sandhill cranes migrate through Nebraska every year. They stop along the Platte River to rest and feed. According to information from the sanctuary, the birds gain 10 percent of their body weight while they're in Nebraska.
     We got back to the bridge near Fort Kearny in plenty of time. It was about an hour before sunset. We made our way to the bridge, a former railroad structure, and sat on one of the two built-in benches enjoying the dying rays of the sun.
     After a while, we were joined by a handful of other people who seemed to know more what they were doing than we did. They were talking about other bird-watching excursions they'd been on and we heard some of them say they were from Georgia.
     We waited and waited, but no cranes landed on our stretch of the river. They flew over us in droves, chirruping to each other and heading for another location, I suppose. None chose to land where we were.
     It was interesting to hear their calls. They're described as honking, but it's not like the kind of honking call a goose makes. I was trying to decide how to describe them myself, and the closest word I could find was chirrup.
     We were disappointed that we didn't get to see them roost. I'm going to blame it on the other people. By the time it got to dusk, there were about 30 of us on the bridge. Despite the sign that said to be quiet, others were walking around and talking in normal voices. I was a little annoyed at that, but since the other people seemed to have a better idea of what was going on than I did, I didn't say anything.
     Since no birds came to roost where we were, Mom decided we should try to head east. So we went back toward Rowe Sanctuary. We saw hundreds of birds still in the fields, so we knew that not all of them had called it a night yet.
     But we weren't able to complete the quest. So we came back to Seward, tired and a little bummed.
     It was interesting to see the cranes, even in the fields. They're such a prehistoric looking creature, I'm guessing that's why I think of them when I read Jurassic Park.