by Rowena Mills
Photographs by Don Brockmeier
A s a couple of dozen people waited in hushed expectance in a large viewing blind, it seemed at first that not very
many birds were planning to settle down for the night on that stretch of the Platte River. But as a huge sunset deepened to spectacular hues of red, more and more birds whooshed in, landing on the marshy shoreline, vocalizing, walking, dancing — thousands and thousands of them.
Sandhill cranes have traveled through Nebraska for ages. Fossils of sandhill wing bones ten million years old have been found in the state. Every year in late winter and early spring, 500,000 sandhill cranes leave their winter grounds in Mexico, Texas, New Mexico, Arizona, and the western two-thirds of Oklahoma. They stop over in a narrow swath of south-central Nebraska for rest and courtship before going on to Canada, Alaska, and Siberia for the summer. Grazing on waste grain in crop fields, they add about 10 percent of their body weight, building up their depleted fat reserves to complete their migration. The sandhills stop in Nebraska in the fall also, but for a very short time and not in large numbers. At that point, they just want to get south where the food is located.
The sandhills and other migratory birds converge on a narrow sliver of the Platte River Valley in the North American Central Flyway. One of the few places to get a close view is at Iain Nicolson Audubon Center at Rowe Sanctuary on the Platte River south of Gibbon, Nebraska.
In addition to more than 80 percent of the world’s population of sandhill cranes, other birds congregate on the Platte during migration also. They include seven million to nine million ducks and geese, hundreds of thousands of shorebirds, millions of songbirds, a few hundred bald eagles, and some of about 700 whooping cranes still in the wild. Some whoopers use the Central Flyway, and others, which were an introduced flock, use the Eastern Flyway from Florida to Wisconsin.
The Platte, one of the longest braided rivers in North America (much of the Missouri River was and still is braided), historically attracted the birds because it was broad and somewhat treeless with long, low sandbars and slow-paced waters. Although development has altered the Platte in many places, human effort has helped to
keep a critical area of the valley and the adjacent Rainwater Basin suitable for migratory birds.
Sandhills travel in family groups and spend about three weeks along the Platte in the spring. A sandhill is three or four feet tall with a wingspan of six feet and a weight of eight to 12 pounds. The birds fly at about 38 miles per hour and can travel 170 to 450 miles per day. They mate for life at three or four years old and can live to be 20 to 40 years old. A pair of sandhills typically lays two eggs per year, with only one chick usually surviving.
The sandhills at sunset in their fragile, timeless environment are an unforgettable sight and a breathtakingly beautiful link to the past.
For more information, see www.rowesanctuary.org or call (303) 468-5282.
