My oldest brother and his wife go to Florida every winter. Sat. they had a whoping crane in their back yard. He then went into the street and my brother was able to get a pic of him. He said that the bird stands about 4 ft. high.
Seeing that picture, reminds me of a few shots I took at my daughters father in laws home. He along with the help of the county something or other, created the pond in the background. The pond drew many birds, among them these two. They summer at his pond. They sure are every bit of 4 feet tall. And from Florida to Wisconsin, some range. Tom
WOW those certainly make our herons look a tad on the small side!! Lovely piccies from you both - thanks for letting us see them. :-D
Such majestic birds! We've got cranes passing overhead, but I've only seen one properly once, spring three years ago. They are a delight to see, because they're so different.
wow, beautiful birds! I can see definite similarities in the bone structure between them and our blue herons (same size, interestingly), but your cranes are much more showy.
What tall, elegant beauties they are. I agree Eileen, they would certainly show our heron a thing or 2!
Hello Capt, Great fotos! :-D Imagine that--right in town! I was lucky enough to see and photograph some Sandhill Cranes (Grus canadensis), up in Alaska a number of years ago. This bird looks like them to me instead of the Whooping Crane. It's not really important, but it was such a special moment for me back then. I took almost 45 minutes to creep up on them on my belly to get close enough to take some fotos. I had gotten a call from an aquaintance in the early morning to come over to their house and and see the "strange, large birds" out in his field. He didn't know what they were. The frost was still on the ground and it crunched as I slithered over the ground. I had to control my breathing so that I didn't look like a train chugging across that field towards the cranes. I took fotos at different stages so that I would at least have those, and hoping for better. I knew that each half meter that I moved foreward could spook them to fly away. I recall that I was so excited at the opportunity that my hand holding the telefoto lens was shaking almost too much to get decent pics. In those days they were quite rare, and so it was a memorable occasion for me.
So stately and oh so elegant. :-D Those are great pictures. Incidently, on one of our coins here in South Africa a Blue Crane is featured.
