Sandhill Migration

A trio of sandhill cranes coming in for a landing near the wetlands.

Driving through Indiana this weekend, I was surprised to pass stubbled corn fields packed with hundreds of smoky-plumaged sandhill cranes, picking through the waste corn to fuel their migration back to breeding grounds in the northern US and Canada.

I knew about the massive flocks of sandhill cranes that passed through Nebraska in the spring, more than half a million birds converging along river valleys in March and April. I had never heard of large flocks coming through Iowa, and assumed that their migration route did not venture further east.

A glance at their species maps, however, shows two distinct migratory populations: one that winters in Texas and Mexico, migrating north through the Great Plains; and another that winters in Florida and migrates up through Georgia, Tennessee, Kentucky, and Indiana to breeding grounds in Wisconsin, Michigan and points north. There is a distinct gap in the regular migration routes from southern Iowa, down through Missouri, Arkansas, and Louisiana.

We are lucky, though, in that the Sycamore Greenway regularly hosts a family of sandhill cranes, with a breeding pair occasionally raising young near the wetlands. Some days, you can hear their raucous calls rolling across the Greenway for nearly a mile, a happy reminder of the wildlife that this stormwater management system hosts and sustains.