I want to thank everyone who submitted questions in response to a post from last month requesting them. I think I’ve responded to everyone, though not always with a robust or satisfactory answer. As I frequently tell people, I’m far from an expert on all things prairie (and am absolutely not the insect identification expert people often think I am). In fact, as many of the other ‘more mature in age’ readers will empathize with, my expertise seems to diminish each year as I become increasingly aware of how complex the world truly is.

Anyway, if you haven’t already, I encourage you to scan through the questions and answers in the comments section of that post. It was fascinating to see the themes that emerged from the questions this time around. There were a few soils/nutrients questions I gave poor answers to, and the always-expected-and-welcomed question about the differences between bison and cattle. Apart from those, however, it was fun to see how many people are trying to convert their lawn to prairie or are working on similar, but larger, restoration/conversion projects. It’s been really inspiring to see the energy around those topics continue to grow over the years.

Today’s post is about sandhill cranes and the annual spring migration and major staging event along the Central Platte River in Nebraska. Seeing hundreds of thousands of cranes each spring is a pretty sweet employment benefit here at our Platte River Prairies. Sandhill crane calls are our soundtrack of spring, and multitudes of gray birds form a joyful background to our daily work. It’s not a bad gig.

I’m no wildlife photographer, as I’ve stated many times. I don’t have either the equipment or patience to do what real wildlife photographers do, so I don’t try to compete in that arena. Most of my photography centers on the little organisms that make up the biological diversity of prairies and that I find endlessly fascinating. I can photograph those with my cheap cameras and a simple macro lens, which both saves me money and gives me the chance to continually discover, capture images of, and learn about new species.

However, I do carry my camera with me most places, and that includes going into viewing blinds along the Platte River, where we take our members and supporters out to see cranes up close. As a result, I end up getting a few photos each year – and, more recently, a little video footage.

I’ve had a couple nice viewing experiences this year and I took a few photos and videos that I thought I’d share today for those of you who haven’t gotten to see this phenomenon for yourselves. If you’re not familiar with the broad story of cranes and the Platte River, you can read a quick summary of the annual phenomenon here. You might also be interested in a recent blog post on The Nature Conservancy’s Cool Green Science blog that talks about an observation I made a few years ago of cranes staining their gray feathers rusty brown.

On a recent evening viewing blind trip, we had a couple Canada geese land by themselves quite a ways upriver of where sandhill cranes were starting to gather. I liked the way the geese were silhouetted against the river, which was reflecting post-sunset color. I kept my eye on those same two birds as their temporary solitude became overrun with noisy neighbors over the next half hour or so.

Other than watching those geese, I took a few other photos of crane silhouettes, but ended up focusing more on the people watching the birds. I’ve had the viewing blind experience so many times now that most of my enjoyment comes from watching people having their first opportunity.

Given the choice, I prefer visiting our viewing blinds in the morning rather than in the evening. Both are worthwhile, but different. In the evening, we watch birds descend from the sky in large noisy groups and land. That’s terrific, but by the time they arrive, there’s usually not a lot of light left to watch them interact with each other. In the mornings, we sneak in while it’s still dark and get to watch the cranes wake up and prepare for their day. Their activity levels increase as the sun rises, leading – usually – to their departure to go feed all day in grasslands or corn fields.

I love watching cranes in those early morning hours. At first, they’re pretty calm, and start eating, drinking, and exploring around them as the day slowly brightens. Later, there’s more nervous energy in the crowd that seems driven partly by sexual tension – lots of crane pairs ‘dancing’ with each other in leaping displays that sometimes includes throwing of sticks or other objects. They also jump and posture in apparent attempts to shoo neighbors away from their mates. (“Hey, back off sister, this one’s MINE!”).

As some birds start leaving the river, all the others start bouncing around even more. A perpetual question among their human viewers is whether the same groups of birds leave the river together each day. In other words, when 15 or 20 birds take off in the morning, are those the same 15 or 20 birds that hung out the previous day? Or are the daily cliques of birds determined more randomly, based on who decides to lift off just because the cranes next to them are leaving? There are definitely family groups – pairs, with or without a juvenile – but beyond that, we really don’t know much about how they decide who to hang out with each day. They all look alike, after all (at least to us).

Here are three videos I made during a morning visit to the river a couple weeks ago that will give you a feel for the morning viewing blind experience. (If the videos aren’t working and you’re reading this in your email, click on the title of the post at the top of the email to open it online.)

Our annual crane season should extend for another few weeks, though I expect we’ll see a lot of them starting to head north as soon as we get some sunny days and south winds. (They also pass through as they head south in the fall, but typically in relatively small groups that don’t stop by for long.) It’s nice to see the cranes each year, but it’s also fun to see them spiral upward into the air, riding thermals higher and higher until they finally catch a tailwind toward their breeding grounds. We’ll enjoy the spring soundtrack for as it lasts this year, knowing the cranes will be back again next year.

If you’re interested in making the trip to the Central Platte River to see the annual spring staging event of sandhill cranes, you’ve got lots of options. It’s easy to just drive county roads near the river, especially between the cities of Grand Island and Kearney. The cranes are all over the place in the field, where you can observe them from your car. (Please don’t drive onto private property – stay on the road and in your car where you won’t bother either the birds or our human neighbors.)

The best experience, though, is to get into a viewing blind. If you’re a Nebraska member of The Nature Conservancy, you should get an email, postcard, or other communication each year, inviting you to free opportunities to watch cranes from our viewing blinds. If you’re not (and why aren’t you?), there other terrific options, including guided tours offered by our conservation friends at National Audubon Society’s Rowe Sanctuary and the Crane Trust. Our blinds are used only for the limited number of trips we take with our members and supporters, but those other two organizations cater very well to the general public. Please check them out!

I spent some time at the Niobrara Valley Preserve this week. Apart from some other work duties, I was curious to see how far spring had progressed and check on the results of a prescribed fire we conducted last November. The executive summary is this: spring isn’t quite here yet and the results of the fire look great so far.

I know it’s only mid-March, which is pretty early to expect much green-up, let alone flowering of plants in northern Nebraska. On the other hand, it’s been a mild winter, especially during much of February and March. I’ve been seeing photos of blooming pasqueflower on social media and have been finding more and more insects as I walk around. I figured there might be a chance of finding an early pasqueflower in bloom at NVP.

Not quite yet.

However, there was still plenty to see. I spent time with a small group of bison and watched them graze on the dormant vegetation from last season. Even after seeing this for many years, it still astounds me that these huge animals can fulfill their nutritional needs from dried-up plants. They’ve had millennia to hone their methods, of course, but still. Those are big animals and I don’t know if you’ve ever chewed on dried up grass but it doesn’t seem very satisfying.

Those bison are picking up some green(ish) sedges too, of course, which are valuable because they green up early and stay green late into the fall and early winter. Even so, the bulk of what the bison were eating this week was not green.

You might be thinking – well, wait, hay is just dried vegetation too, right? That’s supposed to be nutritious.

The thing with hay is that it’s harvested during the growing season when the leaves and stems are green and full of nutrients. Plants tend to lose nutritional quality as they mature, and that’s especially true by the time autumn forces full dormancy. Some plants reserve more nutrients in their aboveground portions than others, but they’re still not what they were in the summer.

Haying equipment cuts the tops off plants while they still have their full complement of nutrients and those nutrients remain as the vegetation dries out and gets baled or stacked up for later. The plants these bison are eating had completed their annual cycle of growth and dormancy, so the nutrient content was significantly different.

While I was in the area, I checked quickly on the little prairie dog town closest to headquarters to see what the activity level was like. It wasn’t frenetic, but there were a few running around. One of them was willing to stare at me long enough for me to get a photo before it dove underground. I didn’t linger, and let them get back to whatever they were doing.

When I stopped by my favorite hotspot for pasqueflowers, it took me a while to find any of them. The patch grows on a steep north-facing slope and I wandered up and down that slope for several minutes before I spotted the first fuzzy bud. It helped that I was looking back toward the sun, which backlit the tiny hairs and made each bud look like a tiny lightbulb. No flowers yet, but it won’t be long!

I didn’t see any flowers, per se, on the whole trip. However, I did find flower-like structures on a couple different species. There were at least a couple different mosses with sporophytes (fruiting bodies) growing in shady spots, both at the edge of the prairie/woodland border and down along a creek. In addition, some of the lichens in the woods were showing off their vase-like perithecia (I had to look that one up).

Little invertebrates were starting to move around, too. I saw flies, lacewings, and lots of grasshoppers – especially in bare ground on sunny south-facing slopes. I played for a while with a little wolf spider in the woods who was surprisingly willing to put up with me. When it started running off, I just put my hand down in front of it and it turned around and climbed back up on a leaf for more photos. That’s not usually the way that works out, but I was sure grateful.

One of my priorities for the trip was to spend some time checking out the results of last year’s late November burn in the bluffs north of the river. The 2012 wildfire had taken out most of the big ponderosa pines and eastern redcedars and forced many of the bur oaks to resprout from their bases. Since then, smooth sumac had spread significantly and little eastern redcedar trees were popping up all over. We needed a fire to kill those little cedars and help us (temporarily) set back the sumac a little – in conjunction with some other treatments we’ll be trying.

I was most curious to learn the fate of some little ponderosa pines that had been planted near the top of the ridge after the wildfire. At the time they were planted, I was skeptical that they’d survive. I figured they’d either fail to establish roots or would be taken out by the first prescribed fire we ran up that slope. After all, they’re not known to be good about surviving fires when they’re little.

I was pleasantly surprised by what I saw. There were definitely some toasted pines up there, but I’d say 80% of the trees I found were alive – either untouched by fire or only lightly scorched. The ignition pattern of the fire probably helped a lot. We’d lit along the top and let the fire work down the hill, which kept the heat low and flame lengths short. In fact, the fire didn’t burn very far downslope in many places because the density of grass wasn’t enough to offset the fact that the fire had to burn downhill (heat rises, so fires burn much better going uphill than down).

Later in the burn, fires lit down below raced upslope for a while, but most ran into enough bare rocky areas on the ridges that the flames never reached the top where the pines were. As a result of all that, we have quite a few little pines that still have a chance to become part of a future pine savanna up there. In fact, we’ve got way more than we really need, since we don’t want very high tree density. We’ll deal with that later if we have to. Those little guys still have a lot of living to do before they’re savanna-sized.

We sure did kill a lot of eastern redcedars in the fire. I knew there were quite a few moving in, but I was still surprised by the number of orange (and dead) trees scattered around. Many of them were on the lower slopes, where the fire burned really well, but we got some up higher on steep slopes too. There will be a few the staff will have to chase down with chainsaws at some point, but I was really pleased by how well the fire did the work for us.

The smooth sumac will pop right back this spring, but the fire at least took out all the aboveground buds and that’ll stress the plants a little. We’re talking now about what we can do to build upon that stress and slow the recovery of the sumac clones long enough to let the prairie community beneath the shrubs survive. That’ll be part of a continuing set of trials we’ve been setting up to learn more about how to suppress sumac and other shrubs in this kind of topography and at this scale. Stay tuned!