Sandhill Cranes, and a Flock (!) of White-fronted Geese, January 25, 2020, Mills River, NC

It was late-morning on January 25th when I received this text from the Blue Ridge Birders group –

“Two Sandhill Cranes flying south to north over Hwy 191 in Mills River.  Coasted in and landed in a flooded field behind a dairy farm.”

With a quick check of eBird I got an exact location – not more than 20 minutes from the house.  Interesting that just a few days earlier, when I wasn’t able to locate any chaseable Cranes in eastern NC, I told myself that I’d just have to get my NC Cranes closer to home.  Now was my chance.

I wasn’t available to head out for a couple hours, but I was optimistic that the target Cranes would still be hanging around.  As I drove along Route 191 I quickly spotted the flooded field mentioned in the text, though I had to drive a short distance past it to find a place to park along this busy road.  After a short walk I was on the shoulder looking north out over the flooded field in the distance.  I did a quick binocular scan but didn’t notice any Cranes – just a number of geese and ducks swimming in the field.  And then I noticed that one of the geese had an orange bill – I had a White-fronted Goose.  With better scope views I realized I had a whole flock of White-fronts – I tallied 23 in total in with about 100 Canadas.  I posted my find to the text group and got a response that a flock of 23 could be a record number for western NC.

Although I was happy to have found the White-fronts, I still hadn’t found my target Sandhill Cranes.  I walked a bit farther along the road to change my viewing angle a couple times, but still couldn’t find the Cranes.

With lots of recent rains there were a number of flooded fields in the area.  And since the spot where the Cranes were found was just a short distance from the Hooper Lane hotspot, I decided to head there to check out flooded fields at that site.  Along the way I called Vicky Burke to alert her of all the good birds.  It turned out she was actually just leaving Hooper Lane when I called.  Although she hadn’t seen any Cranes, she did not check out the flooded field at the eastern edge of Hooper Lane.  She headed to the Route 191 site to check out the White-fronts and of course try for the Cranes, and I continued on to Hooper Lane to check out that one flooded field.

Then not 5 minutes later Vicky called me to say the Cranes were back along Route 191.  I quickly headed back to my car and minutes later I was with Vicky and another birder along 191 looking at the Cranes.  Apparently they had just seen the birds fly back into that flooded field.  I took this very distant photo of the Cranes in the background, and later realized that I could count at least 8 White-fronted Geese swimming in the foreground.  Certainly a rare combination for the mountains of western NC.

My statebird map for Sandhill Crane is inserted below – solid shaded states are those where I’ve seen this species; cross-hatched states are those where it is regular but I haven’t seen it yet.  Nice to fill in NC on the map, where Sandhill was #286 for my statelist.