I was happy to add Sandhill Crane to my life list, though with a "BVD" notation ("Better View Desired").
On Saturday, I was able to remove that notation.
One of the six subspecies of Sandhill Cranes migrate this time of year from the far north (Arctic/northern Canada) to California via our lovely state, and will stop over to forage here and there -- mostly there. It is unusual for one to stop in the Puget Sound region -- and the Montlake Fill had only a handful of "fly over" records before, never one landing to forage.
This one turned up at the Fill on Friday -- which upset me, as had it been any Friday over the past twelve years, the one day of the week when I got to work from home, I would have driven there on my lunch hour to see it. Alas, thanks to a re-org, I no longer have a telecommute day. So I sat there at the office on Friday thinking, "Please stick around, please stick around just one more day!"
Well, as you can tell, the bird clearly listened to my plea. On Saturday morning I rushed to the Fill, where the crane was foraging not far from the trail. I got lovely views -- at one point it was no more than 25 feet away -- a great improvement on the Snohomish experience.
Beautiful bird. I trust it has found its proper flight path by now -- no one reported seeing it there on Sunday. Glad I got to see it!
That's totally awesome. What a beautiful bird. You do realize you could pop over to Othello on a trip to the Fried Cities right? They have an official Sandhill Crane festival every year. Not sure when it is, but could be fun for a crazy birder lady LOL.
ReplyDeleteThe Othello festival is at the end of March, when I'm too timid to go over the mountain pass in little Winnie the Wienermobile. But yeah, it would be way cool to see them in large numbers.
DeleteWell, if it's any help - I've driven over the pass in March in my little Chevy Aveo which doesn't have much more (if any) power that Winnie and it was fine. Just be careful. You can do it!
ReplyDeleteOh, those are lovely! We saw a big flock of American white pelicans a few weeks ago, in a pond with a large number of vociferous Canada geese; at one point Raphael said, "Is that a heron?" and I looked and it was a sandhill crane back in the cattails. There was another one too. They were just walking quietly in the shallow water. You could only really see them when they straightened their necks all the way; the late sunlight was so red that the red parts of their feathers didn't really show up.
ReplyDeleteThat is a bird waiting all those years for, quite remarkable!
ReplyDeleteI feel like you as I ask, "Would it have killed you to let *me* know about this rare bird at the Fill?" But that's okay. We went to Camp Long on Saturday and heard a couple of ruby-crowned kinglets making noises we didn't know they made and a pileated woodpecker flew out of the trees to a telephone pole in the parking lot just so we could see it as it was leaving. -m.
ReplyDeleteSorry -- I was under the impression that you read Tweeters, where reports were posted on both Friday and Saturday. Glad you enjoyed Camp Long -- I haven't seen kinglets in ages.
DeleteSo if you're not reading Tweeters, then I'll let you know that a Clay-colored Sparrow has been seen at the Fill of late, in the brambles along the lake shore. Rare!