# Yet Another Form of Wildlife at the Farm Well, I caught these creatures with my Sony -- sorry for the picture quality. I was shooting towards the morning sun and this great Sony has no viewfinder, if you can believe it! Between my super-duper tri-focal, anti-glare, transition lenses and the anti-glare viewing screen I had no idea whether… ## Thread In General · started by baanton · 12 replies - **Category:** [General](https://nihonken.org/community/c/general) - **Forum:** [Nihon Ken Forum](https://nihonken.org/community/) ## baanton · 2008-08-22T21:48:00.000Z Well, I caught these creatures with my Sony -- sorry for the picture quality. I was shooting towards the morning sun and this great Sony has no viewfinder, if you can believe it! Between my super-duper tri-focal, anti-glare, transition lenses and the anti-glare viewing screen I had no idea whether I had these birds in view until the shoot was all over and I was inside! I love the camera, but failed to recognize how often I'd love to have that old-fashioned viewfinder in my life! So I cropped and enhanced, etc. etc... Well, with that little snit over--- I believe these are sand hill cranes, and have never seem them until last summer. Then we saw three... This past weekend, I caught at least nine on camera in the morning, and surprised fourteen of them later in the day while walking Josephine in the field --- no camera with that time. The videos are a travesty as the picture, but thought you'd like to hear their calls. ## JessicaRabbit (admin) · 2008-08-22T21:49:39.000Z They're heron right? I have never seen that many together. Beautiful. ## baanton · 2008-08-22T22:01:53.000Z Well, now you are asking some hard questions. When we saw them last summer (from afar, grant you, and no kidding on this story!) --- we thought they might have been ostrich escaped from a local farmer who got into some exotic bird raising. Then my husband was able to sneak up closer to them and figured they were sand hill cranes (maybe some say aka heron, except I see lots of heron on the waters in MN, and they are very small compared to these guys, and seem to hang by the water --- same with the snowy white egrets)... Some of these birds are 5-6 feet tall, and they are something to see fly because their wingspan about equals their height. Sorry I can't give you good perspective on size with these pics. Anyway, last summer I looked at the internet info, and found that sand hill cranes love exactly the conditions we have to offer --- combination of deciduous and evergreen forests, swamp or marsh, some high land and field/pasture land, etc. They spend their summers in the northern climates like ours, and in Canada (and by the way there are such birds in Europe too, and the various countries of the former Soviet block (like Siberia, etc.)). They migrate to central/ South America and come back to northern United States each year. A friend of mine tells me that they gather by the thousands on their way north in North Platte, Nebraska, then sort of fan out as small groups from there. Not sure what they do in North Platte (except there is the big river, and maybe some frog hatch or something to sustain them on the rest of the journey). Anyway, he has a wildlife photographer friend who takes a trek each year to North Platte in the springtime to do a "meet-up" with the birds. Lucky us -- looks like maybe we now have one or more nesting families joining us for the summer months. All that tree planting is paying off, I guess. ## MommyofNiko · 2008-08-22T22:54:19.000Z Where in MN was that? My mom lived in Forest Lake and always had the craziest birds, wild Turkey, pheasants...Have I said lately that I miss MN?? ## baanton · 2008-08-22T23:10:25.000Z Rachael: We have a farm up in Aitkin county. It's about 130 miles north of our home here in the city. ## MommyofNiko · 2008-08-22T23:16:12.000Z Ahhh...You never know what you can see in the city also. That is amazing. Niko would go nuts on them! ## okiron · 2008-08-22T23:50:45.000Z I have this intense urge to run into the flock with my arms waving around wildly and screaming like a lunatic. ## Sangmort (moderator) · 2008-08-23T01:52:01.000Z We have the same exact birds [ or very similar looking? ] here in FL! However, their flocks don't get nearly as large, we only ever see 2 or 3 at a time. Their super sweet & always let me get really close to them :)~ ## ddowdemers · 2008-08-23T14:50:57.000Z THose are definitely Sand Hill Cranes in their summer plumage. WOW! Just like Nat. Geo. What a sight! ## Sangmort (moderator) · 2008-08-23T16:37:19.000Z Same birds, right? [ sorry about quality, taken with my sister's Kodak ] It's a little crazy to see how they can adapt to such completely different environments. :)~ ## MommyofNiko · 2008-08-23T22:59:12.000Z I love the second pic, looks like it is 2 headed and there is a head coming out of the butt! ## Sangmort (moderator) · 2008-08-23T23:06:36.000Z It should be on a postcard Rachael! "Only in Florida..." lol~ --- **Navigate:** [Forum home](https://nihonken.org/community/?format=md) · [Sitemap](https://nihonken.org/community/sitemap.xml)