Sandhill Cranes at Jasper-Pulaski Fish & Wildlife Area

October and November are the prime time to view the sandhill cranes at the Jasper Pulaski Fish and Wildlife Area that is about twenty miles northeast of Rensselaer.

Over the Thanksgiving Holiday I re-visited the area and got to see the birds at sunset. My daughter-in-law was so excited about them that she went back the next day to take more pictures. Most of the pictures in this post are hers.

The crowd in the morning was smaller than the crowd at sunset. My daughter-in-law has a very nice camera, but she was intimidated by the photographic equipment that many others had. Look at the size of some of those lenses.

When she got there a bit after sunrise, there were still thousands of birds in the field. The field is fenced and off-limits to visitors, but there is a viewing platform plus a very large parking lot for visitors.

A picture like the one below is beyond the reach of my humble digital cameras. Click on it for an even larger version.

The previous evening as the birds were settling down for a long winter's nap, there was equipment in the adjoining field harvesting. It made an interesting contrast. The field is part of Jasper-Pulaski.

In the evening the big birds are beautiful against the orange sky of the sunset.

During the day, the birds feed in neighboring fields and then they return to the refuge to overnight. The flights of birds come in for hours.

Occasionally there are large bursts of birds landing at the same time. The sandhill traffic control does not seem to be very effective in spacing them out.

The picture shows the observation platform in the evening after people had started leaving. Half an hour earlier people were jostling for spots along the rail.

Here is a an article on the cranes in the Chicago Wilderness Magazine. (Their pictures are not as good as the ones above.) Also, Jasper-Pulaski is on my top-ten list for the Rensselaer area.

Update: Two people who live in the area told me that sandhill cranes had eaten koi from their ornamental ponds. It is not just grain in the fields that the birds are eating.

Also, someone who lives up that way says that there areas outside of the Jasper-Pulaski Wildlife Area that smaller numbers of cranes congregate at night.

Finally, in some states you can hunt sandhill cranes, but you better be very careful not to shoot a whooping crane. There is a very large fine for that.