April 2019 • Nebraskaland 51
enough, and defi nitely not sharp enough, for a quality photo.
But when you're this close to one of the rarest birds on earth,
undetected, you snap away. And then we watched the story
of my life unfold as the birds walked within 50 yards of the
overnight photo blind I helped him build on that island last
year. Really? I'd spent several nights in that blind, sleeping
with the cranes. Had I known ...
The pair worked their way downriver, feeding in the
shallows and occasionally pausing to dance. When they were
well out of range, we moved to another blind my friends at
the Crane Trust granted me access to, hoping to see the other
seven whoopers. We did, hundreds of yards away on the far
bank.
The next morning we were back in the Trust blind, but the
seven whoopers were gone. We spotted the pair, but they
were far from Chad's blind. He suggested we take a drive
down Shoemaker Island Road and there, feeding in a meadow
managed by the Platte River Recovery and Implementation
Program, we found the pair again. They must have felt sorry
for taunting me the night before. As we watched from the
truck, the pair took fl ight, fl ew right over us and started
circling, giving me several photo ops, some too close as I was
geared up for photos in the fi eld and had no time to change.
With each pass they gained altitude. We watched with
binoculars until they were specks in the sky and then gone,
heading north to their next stop between the central Platte
River Valley and their breeding grounds in Canada.
This majestic species provided photo ops for many last
spring along the Platte. Still endangered, but numbering
more than 500 now after falling to 15 in the mid-1900s, there
will be more in the years to come. Maybe even when I'm in
Chad's photo blind.
Whooping cranes fl y above the central Platte River Valley last spring.