Are you ready? Wait for it. Because it wasn't a chicken. Arrgh!
All kidding aside, the crane needs to be careful. There are people out there that would try to run down an animal in the road, sad to say. And rarity doesn't enter into the equation. To it's credit, it did look both ways before crossing. No kidding.
I followed the crane around for about two hours. You think I wasn't going to take a lot of pictures? The thinking is you are constantly trying to improve the background or trying to get a better pose or unusual behavior and the like. So, you take a lot of pictures and then sort them out and keep the best. No, I am not going to admit to how many pictures I took in the two hours. You're welcome to guess. I'll admit it if you're close...
The crane finally made it into a corn field which is a little more natural background. Sandhill cranes, like humans, are omnivorous, meaning they eat meat and vegetables. In fact, they have quite a varied diet. It seemed perfectly content to probe for earthworms for an hour before heading into the field for veggies.
North America only sports two species of crane, the Sandhill and the Whooping Crane which is endangered. There are occasional vagrant sightings of the Common Crane, a Eurasian species in the central U.S. The Whooping Crane should be called the Whopping Crane. It has close to an eight foot wingspan, almost twice the Sandhill's!
When the combines harvest the corn fields, there is always some that gets missed. That is why you see Canada Geese picking around in corn fields. The Sandhill had no trouble finding kernels of corn amongst the refuse in the field.
Here is a close-up of the last photo above. Yes that is a corn kernel in it's bill.
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