SPRING ON THE PLATTE

     Rowe Sanctuary along the Platte River in southern Nebraska is beautiful and exciting to experience in March and April.  The Platte reflects the beauties of the sky as it flows broadly and shallowly on the flat landscape of the Nebraskan prairie.  And the river is flanked on both sides by tall, beige grass and weeds, which, in turn, are bordered by cottonwoods and other kinds of gray, deciduous trees, creating lovely scenery.  I've seen that beautiful scenery, and intriguing wildlife, through a live camera along the Platte and our computer screen in the spring of 2020.  
     Certain kinds of water-loving birds live on and along the Platte through parts of some winters and into early spring.  Flocks of Canada geese, mallard ducks and northern pintail ducks float on the protective waters of that river and feed on corn kernels in neighboring harvested corn fields.  The geese and ducks are striking when they fly up from the Platte, flock after flock, and are darkly silhouetted before brilliant sunsets as they fly to fields to feed.  
     Interestingly, too, pintails engage in courtships on the Platte.  For example, four or five drake pintails surround a hen on the water to show off their charms.  The hen leaps into the air and flies off with "break-neck" speed, with the drakes close behind her.  Careening and swerving over the water, the drakes do their best to keep up with her.  But the male who stays with the hen the longest gets to be her mate for the coming breeding season in the American and Canadian prairie pothole country in the mid-west of both countries.    
     Common merganser ducks are also on the Platte in winter.  They dive under water from the surface to catch and consume small fish.
     Several each of majestic bald eagles and adaptable ring-billed gulls winter along the Platte.  Both species scavenge dead fish and catch live ones when the river is not frozen over.  The eagles also catch ducks and other creatures at times.      
     But six hundred thousand, migrant sandhill cranes are the stars of the Platte in much of March and April.  Having come up from wintering in Texas, Arizona and New Mexico, they arrive at Rowe Sanctuary and the Platte early in March and stay there until about the middle of April.  Then they are off to nesting grounds around the Great Lakes, and on the prairies of Canada, Alaska and Siberia.   
     Over three feet tall, with long legs, neck and beak, each crane is magnificent.  And their great hordes along the Platte in spring are one of the great wonders of nature in North America.
     Each morning, great gatherings of sandhills fly out to fairly-nearby, harvested corn fields to feed on kernels of corn on the ground.  But they return to Rowe Sanctuary and the Platte River each evening in much of March and April.  Through the live camera at sunset, I saw many long lines and bunches of sandhill cranes coming to the river from far-off over the prairie where they fed all day.  And I saw their nighttime environment of the "big sky", and the shallow channels that reflect the sky, mud flats, sand bars and shorelines of the Platte where they will spend several spring nights.
     Within a few minutes, those first flocks of cranes sweep low over the Platte, as more and more bunches of them come up from behind from every direction.  Those first flocks to arrive over the river join each other into bigger and bigger hordes of cranes that call incessantly.  Those large flocks, silhouetted darkly against the sky, swirl round and round over the river, usually in a counter-clockwise direction.  Soon several cranes parachute down to shallow channels and mud flats here and there to spend the night.
     Then, as the whirling clouds of cranes flew over their relatives on the river's shallows and flats, many more cranes swept down to join them.  Soon flocks of cranes descended to the river at once, looking like a waterfall of large, wing-stretched birds.  Meanwhile, rivers of cranes swirled toward the "falls", each group waiting its turn to flow down it to the water.  And, meanwhile, more and more and more flocks of sandhills were coming to the river from all directions and varying distances.  They present amazing sights as the evenings press on and darken!
     The first few sandhills that land on shallows and flats for the night create "islands" of themselves.  And as other cranes join those on the river by the score every second, those islands quickly become longer and wider.  Still more cranes come from the distance as those crane islands become ever larger and larger with the big, silhouetted birds landing in one or another of up to about eight crane islands on the Platte River.      
     Still more and more cranes, silhouetted black against the darkening sky, continued to stream across the sky, swept low to the Platte and landed among islands of their fellows for the night.  There seemed to be no end to the rivers of cranes coming to the Platte.  Each evening, the sky gets darker and darker, and still the sandhills came, calling all the while.  And the crane islands get larger and larger.     
     Six hundred thousand sandhill cranes silhouetted black before the sky and on the Platte is exciting to experience.  But sometime in April, depending on the weather, those cranes head farther north to raise one or two chicks per pair.