Surrounded by Sandhills

We’re lucky to have many Sandhill cranes in my neighborhood.  They’re an endangered species and, to me, rather unusual.  They are very tall, almost 5 feet.  They generally walk slowly with their heads moving gracefully forward and back as they go.  We don’t seem them fly very often, but they can easily do so.  And they have a very distinctive warble.

Shortly after receiving a digital SLR camera as a gift, a group of cranes moved through my front yard and I went outside to photograph them and to learn about my camera.  (Think large 35 mm style camera that creates digital images.)

I guess I startled them because they began slowly moving away, down the street to the right.

There were about nine of them altogether, but I never got all of them in one shot.

But then, something unusual began to happen.

It seemed that they may have changed their minds about the direction they wanted to travel.

Sure enough, they turned around and started back toward me, moving right to left.

I was standing in my driveway and they came closer and closer.  Because I had the camera up to my eye, I was slow to pick up on what was happening next.  The birds were now circling back around me to my left!  It was almost like they were curious.

What was going on here?  They came extremely close and eventually, circled between me and my house.

Now having turned 360 degrees back to their original direction, they traveled across my neighbor’s yard and continued on their way.

This was all very unusual bird behavior.  The only thing I can figure is that they were attracted to the clicking shutter noise of my camera.  Maybe I’ll have to test that theory again one of these days.

I watched them a bit longer and captured this shot of several taking flight.

They’re very majestic birds and I’m glad to have them in our neighborhood.

Ellen Lindner