From late February to early April each year, central Nebraska is the scene of one of the world’s great wildlife migrations, a time when an estimated 500,000 sandhill cranes converge on the Platte River Valley to feed in the dormant cornfields before continuing on to their nesting grounds in Alaska, Canada and Siberia. At dawn and sunset, legions of these magnificent birds prance and dance in the shallow waters of the Platte, providing a spectacle for viewers quietly observing them from blinds along the shore.
For groups meeting in Kearney or Grand Island, an outing to witness this extraordinary occurrence can easily be arranged, a fact I discovered on a central Nebraska fam trip last spring. Our group arrived at the Iain Nicholson Audubon Center at Rowe Sanctuary (http://rowe.audubon.org) outside Kearney in the pre-dawn hours, making a short walk in the dark to a blind perched along the river. The sanctuary offers several blinds that can hold 32 people in each.
Keeping quiet so the birds would not sense our presence, we listened to the chatter of thousands of cranes as the skies lightened. Then, as the sun rose, there was a great rustling of wings as clusters of birds took off in V-shaped formations on their daily quest to find sustenance in the surrounding fields.
The following day, we enjoyed another avian spectacle at the Crane Trust Nature & Visitor Center (www.nebraskanature.org) near Grand Island, first talking with Brad Mellema, director of the Grand Island-Hall County CVB and the former director of the Crane Trust center.
Both dawn and sunset viewings of the cranes are frequently arranged for groups, he explained, along with receptions for up to 300 people in the visitors center, which offers banquet and conference space overlooking the river.
“Groups of about 20 can reserve an entire blind, but you need to do it some months in advance,” Mellema says, “Larger groups can congregate on a footbridge spanning the river, which is a really awesome experience at sunset.”
