Soft gray to cocoa brown, with the slouch and height of a lanky child, the birds grow as tall as 4.5 feet – among the tallest in North America.
And their voices. Their blasts are a cacophony of trumpets tuning up, preternatural honks like pterodactyl squawks. They echo a mile away.
Tennessee Valley residents have the chance to see – and hear – flocks of these magnificent migratory birds each winter on TVA reservoirs and partner-managed refuges.
Tennessee Valley Authority
Note: A excellent but lesser-known location for viewing sandhill cranes is Lake Guntersville’s Crow Creek Refuge at Stevenson, Alabama.
Learn more in an article I wrote a few years ago, Crow Creek: A Birder’s Paradise in Alabama. BB