Jasper-Pulaski crane gathering

Jasper-Pulaski in late October: the Sandhill Cranes start showing up from the upper Midwest and staging by the thousands. I drove from Cleveland on a Saturday and got to the observation deck at Goose Pasture by 3:30 PM. Perfect for the evening fly-in.

The spectacle builds slowly. At 4:00 PM maybe two hundred cranes on the field. By 5:00 PM more like two thousand. Then the big flocks start arriving from the cornfields where they’ve been feeding all day — groups of fifty to a hundred at a time, calling as they come down. By sunset there were easily five thousand birds.

I’d brought the long lens but the long lens wasn’t the tool. The story was wider — layered birds, against grass, against a peach-orange sky. I put the 23mm on and let the scene be the subject.

Beyond cranes: Northern Harrier quartering during the peak, two Bald Eagles that made the cranes briefly panic, a very vocal flock of migrating Tundra Swans overhead. Northern Shovelers in the small pond west of the deck.

I left after full dark and drove two hours back out of cornfield country with cranes still calling in my head. One of those “do this every year” kind of evenings.