About 300 birds killed in Alabama's first sandhill crane season in over a century

by The Associated Press

Saturday, February 15th 2020

MONTGOMERY, Ala. (AP) — About 300 sandhill cranes were killed during Alabama’s first hunting season for the birds in more than a century, the state conservation agency said.

A news release from the state conservation agency said about 400 people bought permits to hunt the large birds, which some people like to eat.

While not everyone with a permit got a bird, migratory game bird coordinator Seth Maddox said the final numbers will probably be in line with other states that have hunting seasons for sandhill cranes.

The state last allowed sandhill crane hunting in 1916 after hunting nearly wiped out the species. A hunting ban allowed the bird’s populations to recover enough to allow a season.

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Nature's great bird migration under threat by you-know-who

by Froma Harrop

Apr 5, 2018

You could call it the Nebraska bird eclipse. At the first dart of morning light, so many sandhill cranes take off from the banks along the Platte River they darken the sky.

This primeval spectacle, part of a massive spring migration from South America to the northern reaches, draws viewers from around the world.

For a century — through depression, world war and countless other national crises — American presidents, Republican and Democrat alike, have honored laws ensuring the survival of these migrating species.

Until this one.

Since Inauguration Day, the Trump administration has engaged in a tireless assault on the nation’s environmental protections.

It should thus surprise no one that it is now going after the Migratory Bird Treaty Act of 1918.

Three days before Christmas, it issued a legal opinion that the law doesn’t prohibit the incidental killing of these birds. Penalties for doing so vanished.

Gutting the law gives industry a free pass to stop taking steps to minimize the deaths of migrating birds. And what makes the move especially perverse is that the things companies can do to comply cost, in most cases, mere pocket change.

For example, birds flying overhead often confuse open waste pits for wetlands. They land in the toxic muck and die. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service estimates that up to 1 million birds are killed every year in oil pits and evaporation ponds.

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Arizona Game and Fish’s sandhill crane cam now streaming

For immediate release, Nov. 10, 2016
Arizona Game and Fish Department

Live stream offers viewers a unique, convenient experience

Sandhill cranes have returned to southeastern Arizona and the Arizona Game and Fish Department’s live-streaming camera is again trained on their wintering grounds at Whitewater Draw Wildlife Area.


“Now is the perfect time to watch these magnificent birds as they winter in Arizona,” said Randy Babb, watchable wildlife program manager for the Arizona Game and Fish Department. “This live-steaming camera allows the public to have an unfiltered view of our state’s wildlife. It also allows the department to connect the public with wildlife.”


The live stream is one of two in the country that offers viewers a glimpse into crane wintering habits. Each year, sandhill cranes coming as far away as Siberia travel thousands of miles to winter in southern Arizona.


Streaming sandhill cranes
The best time to view the birds is a half-hour before and up to a half-hour after sunrise, just before they leave the roost to feed for the morning. Cranes also return to Whitewater Draw sometime in the late morning, generally before noon and remain at the wildlife area for the remainder of the day.


While the department will do its best to keep the camera focused on the cranes and other interesting wildlife subjects, there will be times it isn’t possible due to the unpredictability of wildlife. Viewers that don’t see activity when they try the camera are encouraged to routinely check back. This is especially true in the early winter, when the newly arrived birds are establishing a routine.


The live stream is offered from early November when cranes first start to arrive at Whitewater Draw, through March or early April when the birds leave to migrate to northern nesting grounds.


For those that find the live stream viewing fascinating, the department encourages a trip to Whitewater Draw Wildlife Area for a full sensory viewing experience. The sight of up to 10,000 birds is impressive. More information


About sandhill cranes
Worldwide there are 15 species of cranes scattered across the globe. Most of these are found in Africa, Europe and Asia, and many are either threatened or endangered due to a variety of reasons with habitat loss being chief among them.


Two species of cranes are found in North America, the endangered whooping crane and sandhill cranes, which is the most abundant crane species on the planet.


Cranes of all species sport long necks, beaks and legs with short tails that are not visible when the wings are closed. Sandhill cranes are predominantly grey with fleshy red caps on their heads. The largest subspecies can stand nearly 4-feet tall and sandhill cranes are long-lived and mate for life.


They are wary birds that shy away from areas of dense vegetation that may conceal predators. Cranes prefer to feed and roost in open areas where potential danger can be seen from a distance. Wintering sandhill cranes often feed on agricultural grain crops but may also frequent open desert and fallow fields.


The sandhill crane live stream is supported by the Wildlife Conservation Fund, which comes from tribal gaming and the Wildlife Viewing Program. You can find out more about wildlife viewing and upcoming public wildlife viewing activities at www.azgfd.com/Wildlife/Viewing.

CONSERVATION: Of UAS and Cranes: UAS Technology aid California Bird Conservation

Counting Sandhill Cranes can be a real challenge. How do you estimate the number of birds that gather by the thousands each evening? A new technology has great potential to help.

Enter the Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) – a technology you might better know as a drone.

First, a bit of background. The Nature Conservancy has been demonstrating how a working farm can be managed to support migratory birds for more than a decade at Staten Island in California’s Bay Delta.

Millions of migratory birds on the Pacific Flyway depend on the Central Valley and Delta as an important stopover during spring and fall migration, as well as vital overwintering habitat.

We conduct bird counts to determine how the birds are responding to our management of the island’s resources.

The Sandhill Crane is a special focus of our work but it can be challenging to get good estimates of how many cranes are sleeping and foraging on Staten Island.

At the end of a day foraging in the surrounding landscape, the cranes congregate in large numbers each evening and settle down for the night, all packed together in fields that the Conservancy intentionally floods — providing their preferred roosting habitat of 6-12 inches of water.

The scenery and sounds are primal at sundown in the Delta, with thousands of birds flying in to these fields.

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Bird-friendly Farms Catching On in California

Migratory birds find refuge on farms as part of conservation plan.

Ker Than in Staten Island, California

for National Geographic News

Published February 20, 2013

On a recent bright afternoon in late January, scattered flocks of geese, sandhill cranes, and other birds foraged for food in cornfields on Staten Island (map) in California's Central Valley.

"Some farmers, if they had this concentration of geese, will put out the shotguns and use the sound to distract them," said Brent Tadman, who manages the 9,200-acre (3,700-hectare) Conservation Farms and Ranches on the island.

A pair of sandhill cranes forage on a farm in Staten Island, California.

Photograph courtesy Cynthia Tapley, The Nature Conservancy

But birds on Staten Island are allowed to forage in peace, because this is no ordinary farm. Located about 80 miles (130 kilometers) northeast of San Francisco in the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta, Staten Island was purchased by The Nature Conservancy (TNC) in 2002 in order to create a place where agriculture and conservation can coexist. (Related: "'Walking Wetlands' Help Declining Birds, Boost Crops.")

TNC hopes bird-friendly practices developed and tested on Staten Island will set an example for other farmers for how they can keep their land productive and profitable—while creating habitat for birds traveling along the Pacific Flyway, one of four primary migratory routes in North America.

All About the Cranes

Staten Island is a major stopover and wintering ground for a broad suite of migratory bird species—including waterbirds such as ducks, snow geese, herons, and tundra swans—and shorebirds such as plovers and sandpipers. (See National Geographic's backyard bird identifier.)

It's also one of the most important sanctuaries in the state for sandhill cranes, one of the oldest species of living birds.

"There's a very similar species, if not the ancestral version, of these guys that was around in the dinosaur era," said TNC ecologist Greg Golet.

Continue reading:

Rare sandhill cranes move to new Miss. home

GAUTIER, Miss. (AP) — Dressed in white canvas bags, their faces hidden behind a double layer of heavy black plastic mesh, the biologists turned avian foster parents spoke in hushed voices.

"We don't want to spook the cranes," whispered Megan Savoie, crane project director at the Audubon Species Survival Center.

Her concern was for a quartet of 6-month-old birds destined for theMississippi Sandhill Crane National Wildlife Refuge in Gautier — not for the dozens of adult Mississippi sandhill cranes calling to each other in creaky rattles on New Orleans' west bank.

While the four juveniles raised in Louisiana were heading toward the Mississippi Gulf Coast, so were two more raised in Florida.

But before they could be moved, they had to be caught.

The 4 ½-foot-tall cranes are gray with red foreheads. Only about 150 exist — about one-third as many as whooping cranes. They were among the first animals on the U.S. endangered species list, and their 19,300-acre refuge was the first created under the Endangered Species Act of 1973.

If not for Savoie and other biologists in New Orleans, Florida and Maryland, the refuge would be lacking. More than 95 percent of the 100 birds there either were raised in captivity or are descendants of such birds, said Scott Hereford, top wildlife biologist at the refuge.

Audubon hatched eight this year. Two died within days of unknown causes and one died of West Nile virus complications shortly before it was old enough to fly. Another was eaten by a rat snake. Those snakes have become a problem for Audubon's cranes. They'll eat either chicks or eggs — even decoy eggs used to get cranes to keep laying. Several had to have dummy eggs surgically removed, Savoie said.

Snakes are just the latest challenge at the center, which has raised 150 chicks to flying age since breeding birds were moved there in 1995 from Patuxent, Md. Audubon has 40 adult birds, and the White Oak Conservation Center north of Jacksonville, Fla., has 10.

Read more:  http://www.chron.com/news/science/article/Rare-sandhill-cranes-move-to-new-Miss-home-4083315.php

Crane count: Michigan Audubon Society keeps track of protected birds

DELTON, MI -- The evening sky took on a surreal quality not unlike a scene by Japanese film director Akira Kurosawa. A dull gray ceiling had transformed in just a matter of minutes to an explosion of orange, yellow and purple, flooding the lakefront with a post-apocalyptic light.

To add even more drama, there were cranes flying in. Small flocks hung in the sky over the lake, calling in their unmistakable tongue, part trumpet, part purr, part rattle and croak, a language that has fascinated man for centuries.

Standing nearby, bundled up to ward off cold, Tom Funke was counting them on a clicker he held in his hand. A pair of binoculars hung around his neck.

Funke is the director of conservation for Michigan Audubon Society. He and I had come out for the annual state crane count, an event that provides the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service with a snapshot of migrating crane numbers. The data help them determine the status of the cranes, which are protected under the federal migratory bird treaty act. 

Sandhills almost were extirpated in Michigan, having been sought by market hunters for food and by clothiers for fashionable plumage. They were common in Michigan until the 1880s. By 1905, they were nearly gone.

Read on:  

http://www.mlive.com/outdoors/index.ssf/2012/11/crane_count_michigan_audubon_s.html