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Sandhill Crane

Grus canadensis

Description
Relationships
Distribution and Abundance
Life History
Management

Despite great stature (one and a half meters) and wingspan (two meters) cranes are lightly built, weighing less than a large goose. Their lightness and huge wings are adaptations for long-range flight; thus their extensive migrations.

Cranes are also well-known for their stately courtship rituals, an unforgettable mixture of graceful neck postures, wing flourishes, dance steps, and cries. People the world over have considered sandhill cranes and their relatives to be special creatures. They occur again and again in local art, folklore and sacred traditions. Beringia is no exception.

Cranes feed on a wide variety of plant materials such as berries, vegetation and roots, but will also eat insects, small rodents, fish and even nestlings of other birds! Flowering heads of cottongrass are a favorite. Nesting success may be related to the abundance of this crop in some cases, not only because of its food value to cranes, but because it also may encourage an abundance of lemmings, which divert predators' attention from crane eggs and young.

Adults molt during the summer, leaving beautiful gray-rusty feathers strewn about the tundra. They regain flight about the time that the young begin flying, toward late August. Shortly thereafter the families gather in large flocks and head southeast toward wintering areas in the southern United States and northern Mexico. These migratory flights, sometimes involving thousands of birds, are among the most stirring sights - and sounds - in the animal kingdom. A large proportion of the entire Asian population of perhaps 50,000 individuals may cross the Bering Strait in a few days.

These actions reversed a decline that occurred earlier in this century.

Over the last two decades population estimates have increased from 1,600 to 5,300 birds for the Seward Peninsula population, and from 20,000 to perhaps 50,000 for Asian cranes. The species is extending its range westward along the Asian Arctic coast, and now breeds well beyond the Indigirka River.

As long as the vast Beringian tundra nesting grounds remain intact, sandhill cranes will continue to bring joy and inspiration to the millions of people along their continental flyways.