Fun Facts Friday - the sandhill crane

     I’m not up on all the birds of the world, but I can pick out most of the ones which frequent my neck of the woods.

As you may recall, I had a robin’s nest in my garage this spring, and it appears that the two surviving offspring have left the nest. Yeah! I wish them well but am thankful to park my car in the garage again.

Until my little tenants arrived, I didn’t know much about robins. I read up on them when I discovered the nest, of course, but have forgotten much of it. Robins aren’t birds that particularly interest me. 

But take these guys. Just a young family out for a stroll down a country road.

Sandhill cranes are beautiful, large birds. Couples mate for life and typically hatch one to three young in the spring. On average only one of these youngsters lives to adulthood. Just like the robin hatchlings, no matter how big they may be, baby birds of any kind are easy prey for predators.

So what is a baby crane called? A chick? A gosling? Think about it while I go on.

Maybe, instead, you can guess how long cranes can live? In the wild, they can live as long as 20 years, sometimes even up to 30 years. The oldest documented crane in the wild was over 37 years old.

I wish I’d been able to take a picture of a crane in flight. They remind me of something prehistoric, almost like a tetradactyl. But maybe that’s not so much of a stretch when you realize that cranes are one of the oldest living species of birds. Fossils of them have been found to be two million years old.

The last interesting thing about cranes is their distinctive call. It is one of my favorites, probably only behind the call of the loon or the whippoorwill. Click on this link to hear some of their sounds.

Oh, and lastly, a baby crane is called a colt. Look at those gangly legs and you can figure out why.