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More photos from sandhill crane migration

I promised a few more photos from our visit to the Platte River near Kearney, Neb., this week, where my wife and I viewed the sandhill crane migration. About 600,000 sandhills converge on a section of the Platte each spring to feed in grain fields and wet meadows before continuing their journey north to Canada, Alaska and Eastern Russia for nesting.

Here are a few more shots:

This photo gives you an idea of the number of cranes we saw during our visit.The river's sand bars and shallows were literally full of cranes each night. Cranes prefer to roost in 3 to 6 inches of water so they can hear any predators such as coyotes or bobcats that might try to prey on them.

As thousands of cranes returned to the river to roost one evening, they passed by a nearly full moon.

At daybreak, cranes leave the river in small groups and move out to nearby fields of picked corn to feed on waste grain.

Cranes do a hopping dance that is sometimes territorial and sometimes part of a pre-mating ritual.

These cranes had roosted overnight on the Platte River and were stirring as morning broke over the Nebraska plains. There were cranes as far as we could see up the river that morning.

Tags: daily updates, sam cook, sandhill cranes, outdoors with sam cook, outdoors, cranes, migration, birding