Sandhills!

Sandhill cranes in western Pennsylvania, 2015 (photo by Steve Gosser)
Sandhill cranes in western Pennsylvania, 2015 (photo by Steve Gosser)

Yesterday five of us traveled north to the Volant Strips in Lawrence County to find a northern shrike and short-eared owls.

What we hadn’t expected was a huge flock of 112 sandhill cranes!  The total rose to 124 when we saw 12 in a later part of our trip.

This wintering flock is the largest I’ve ever seen outside of Nebraska.

In the end, we saw the shrike and two short-eared owls but they couldn’t match the wonder of so many sandhill cranes.  🙂

 

(photo by Steve Gosser, 2015)

4 thoughts on “Sandhills!

    1. Kathy, here’s a link to its location + bird information for Volant Strip Grasslands, Lawrence County, PA: http://ebird.org/ebird/hotspot/L793253 It’s called the Strips because its’ a recovered strip mine.
      (NOTE: The “hybrid” maps is the easiest to see. For some reason the Street map is very faint in eBird)

      Best places to see cranes in the fields are Bonani Rd & Golf Course Rd

  1. That’s very cool. The first time we ever saw sandhill cranes was a few years ago in the Bruce Peninsula in Ontario on a field trip with the Botanical Society of Western PA to look for orchids. Then last spring we went on a field trip with the National Aviary to look for migrating water fowl, and we saw a few sandhill cranes in northwestern PA. But I can’t imagine seeing that many at one time. They are truly impressive birds.

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