Return of the Cranes

This morning I heard the sound I had been eagerly anticipating for a few weeks: the strange, trumpet-like gargle of Sandhill Cranes. These are the first of the year cranes for me, and more significant because they are my local pair. Each year they live, breed, and raise their young (called colts) in the field next to my house. Every morning from now until late September their strange calls will greet me as I leave the house. Spring is in the air.

On Saturday, I make the pilgrimage to the White Goose Capitol of Freezout Lake, hopefully during the height of migration.

First Trip with Daddy

Yesterday was my son's inaugural birding trip. It was a short one, a drive around one of my familiar loops. But what a day! In addition to my first-of-year Western Meadowlark, Red-winged Blackbirds, and Mountain Bluebirds, we found five Tundra Swans and seven Trumpeter Swans on our local waterfowl hotspot. Later we found a single adult Snow Bunting feeding with a few Horned Larks. I was lucky enough to study the Bunting through my scope at about twenty yards; it was just beginning its molt into breeding plumage. On the last stretch toward home, a Northern Goshawk flew over the road--a great end to a great day of birding!

My son, being only two years old, didn't quite appreciate the quality of the birds we saw, but he certainly enjoyed seeing Daddy whoop and holler like a kid at Christmas. And when we returned home, he was able to tell Momma about the "duts, deese, and boobirds" that we saw.

This was easily the best trip of the year so far.