Wildlife Weekend: Stalking Sandhill Cranes - Part 2

Remember my Wildlife Weekend about the Sandhill Crane family I've been stalking? I first photographed them on February 27th when the little hatchlings were knee-high to a grasshopper. I photographed them again on March 21 when the hatchlings were really starting to grow, but were still fluffy little things.

And now look at them today. The colts are obviously fully-feathered and must be flying to some extent because in the picture one of the colts is on the other side of the cattle fencing.


It's interesting to me how the parents seem to divide the duties of keeping an eye on the colts...just like we do with our own kids.



The young ones never wander far from the parents and when I saw them the other day the mother was watching one colt and the father was watching the other. They were about 100 feet apart in a field in those photos above and I could see the parents constantly keeping an eye on each other and their colt.