Wet, windy, cold counting

Who showed better sense, the crane counters or the cranes?

It was 30 degrees F, windy and drizzly Saturday for the International Crane Foundation's annual Midwest Sandhill Crane Count. We were in place at 5:30 a.m. The cranes slept in.

Drizzle turned to rain. We all heard cranes, but they stayed sheltered in the wetlands. Outagamie County count coordinator Jess Miller said most counters saw three or four cranes during their two-hour watch. Not many took to the skies.

In my counting spot near the sand hill we call home, nothing much happened until close to 7 a.m. Instead of flying in as they have done in other years, the cranes just walked into the farm field from the woods, and they didn't stray far from the cover.

In all, I saw 21 cranes through a rain-blurred spotting scope. That's a better count than in recent years, well worth the damp clothes and frosty fingers.  -- DH

Eagle-cam now triple the fun

Raptor Resource Project works for the preservation of falcons, eagles, ospreys, hawks and owls by maintaining nest sites and doing training and education. Check its website at www.raptorresource.org/falcon_cams/index.html.

By David Horst  sandhill7@gmail.com

  It’s been almost a week since the first blessed event and Mom is still waiting for the third of her triplets to be born.

The second child made its entrance two days after the first, but, as of this writing, No. 3 is still holding back. That’s the way it goes in the bird world.

I’m talking about the eagle births in Decorah, Iowa, that have caused an international sensation. More than 150,000 people at a time have been watching a live web cam feed of a pair of eagles sitting on a nest 80 feet up in a cottonwood tree at a fish hatchery since the first eaglet hatched – no foolin’ – April 1.

Eagle-cam shows hatch live

Here's an addictive little website:

http://www.raptorresource.org/falcon_cams/index.html 

It is a live webcam of an eagle nest on a reserve in Decorah, Iowa, where eaglets are hatching. The first hatch happened April 2. A counter shows more than 100,000 viewers typically looking in. Thanks to Glen Gorsuch of Neshkoro for alerting me to this site.

The nest is 80 feet up a tree. It measures 5-6 feet across and weighs 1.5 tons. The webcams were placed by the Raptor Resource Project. Take a look, but plan on spending some time there. - DH

Crane No. 301 checks in from Florida

By David Horst  sandhill7@gmail.com  

I’ve been thinking a lot about cranes lately.

Crane #301 (at center) in Florida.
Photo courtesy of Harriette Canon

That’s not all that unusual for me, but I have had some triggers that got me going in that direction.

One was the March 3 Fox Valley premiere of “Green Fire: Aldo Leopold and a Land Ethic for Our Time.” The biographical film on my favorite nature writer, done by the Aldo Leopold Foundation, was terrific. And it featured some great scenes of huge flocks of cranes.

Then, on Monday, I was walking across Houdini Plaza in downtown Appleton and heard a bugling call that has been absent too long through this unending winter. A single sandhill crane – my first of the season – was flying high over College Avenue. Tuesday evening I heard a riotous burst of sandhill enthusiasm flying over the sand hill we call home.

But those were all warm-ups to an email I received from Pat Fisher, the New London bird rehabilitator who thinks about cranes way more than I do.