Sandhill crane

Name and taxonomy

George Edwards figured the bird in 1750 from a skin sent to London. He called it the brown and ash-coloured crane. Carl Linnaeus gave it a scientific name in 1758 and placed it with the herons. The second half of the name is the Latin word for Canadian.

The species sat in the genus Grus for many years. A study of the DNA in 2010 showed that Grus held several unrelated branches. Four species moved into the older genus Antigone, and this crane was one. Five or six subspecies are recognised, and they differ mainly in size. The smallest is the lesser and the largest is the greater sandhill crane.

Evolution and relatives

A crane bone from Nebraska is said to be 10 million years old. That bone may belong to an ancestor rather than to this species. A bone of 2.5 million years is the oldest that certainly belongs to this crane. That is about twice the age of the earliest bones of most living birds.

The lesser and greater cranes split roughly 2.3 to 1.2 million years ago. Ice sheets froze the northern breeding range and cut one group off from the rest. Some researchers think the two forms are far enough apart to be separate species. A study in 2025 found little gene flow between inland and coastal birds. Those two groups also differ in size, colour, face shape and habits. The species can cross with the whooping crane, but the young are sterile.

Appearance

An adult stands 80 to 136 centimetres tall and weighs 2.7 to 6.7 kilograms. Males average 4.57 kilograms and females 4.02 kilograms. The wings span 165 to 230 centimetres. The body is grey all over, with a white cheek and a bare red forehead. The bill is long, dark and sharply pointed.

Breeding birds often look rusty, and they probably stain the plumage with iron-rich mud. In flight the neck stays straight out and the long dark legs trail behind. The wingbeat is a slow downstroke followed by a quick flick upward. A young bird is brown above and grey below, with no red on the head. That bare crown lets a watcher tell a chick from its parents at the same height. The sexes look alike, though the male is usually the larger of a pair.

Habitat and range

The species breeds from Alaska and Arctic Canada south to the Great Lakes. It also breeds west across Idaho, Nevada and Oregon. Separate birds nest in north-east Siberia and on Wrangel Island. Three subspecies stay put all year, in Florida, Mississippi and Cuba. Northern birds winter in California, the south-west and northern Mexico.

Most nests sit in wet meadows, freshwater marshes and bogs. Cuban birds are the exception and use dry grassland and rocky ground. The birds keep away from houses, but they feed freely in farm fields. At night whole flocks roost together in a large marsh or on a shallow river. Two studies in Florida measured home ranges of 657 and 1,366 hectares. The species is recorded in 34 countries and territories on GBIF.

Diet and feeding

The sandhill crane eats mainly plant food and takes whatever the season offers. It walks with the bill down and probes the soil for seed and roots. Corn, wheat, cottonseed and sorghum are all taken from farmland. Waste corn left after harvest fuels the birds before a long migration.

Northern breeding birds have the widest diet of all. They add berries, insects, snails, small mammals, reptiles and amphibians. The bird feeds on dry land or in shallow marsh with standing plants. Insects and rodents taken in a field are a small gain for the farmer. Snow geese now eat the same waste corn, which may cost the cranes.

Behaviour and social life

Sandhill cranes live in pairs and family groups for most of the year. On migration and in winter, unrelated birds join into large survival groups. Those groups feed and roost together and can run into thousands. Winter flocks of more than 10,000 birds gather at some refuges. One such site lies about 160 kilometres south of Albuquerque in New Mexico.

The broad wings make the crane a strong soaring bird, much like an eagle. It rides rising columns of warm air and flaps only now and then. A flock in a thermal traces the shape of that invisible column in the sky. Birds can stay up for hours on very little effort. The species is active by day and roosts in water at night.

Communication and senses

The call is a loud rolling trumpet that carries for kilometres. Adults have more than a dozen calls, described as trills, purrs and rattles. Calls mark a territory, hold a group together and warn of a predator. Like other cranes, it carries a long windpipe coiled inside the breastbone.

A mated pair stands close and performs a unison call. The two voices lock into a duet, and the female gives two notes to each of his. That duet tells other cranes the ground is taken. Body displays matter as much as the voice. Wing stretches, head pumps, bows, leaps and tosses all form part of the dance.

Reproduction and life cycle

Pairs form on spring migration and usually last for life. Dancing is the main way a pair comes together. Five displays make up that dance, from an upright wing stretch to a vertical leap. Three further displays keep an established pair in step through the season. Each pair raises one brood a year.

Migratory birds lay in April or May. Resident birds may lay in any month from December to August. Both adults build the nest from plant material gathered close by. Nests sit in a marsh, a bog or a wet hollow, and now and then on dry ground. The female lays one to three dull brown eggs, and two is the usual number. Both parents sit, and the eggs hatch after 29 to 32 days.

A chick hatches in down with its eyes open and walks away within a day. The parents brood it for up to three weeks and feed it hard at first. Feeding slows until the young bird stands alone at 9 or 10 months. It leaves shortly before the adults lay the next clutch. Young birds then join roaming flocks of other non-breeders. They pair up and start breeding between two and seven years old.

Predators and threats

Eggs and chicks are probably the stage of life most at risk. Ravens, crows, gulls, foxes, coyotes and raccoons all take them. In Oregon and California the worst are coyotes, ravens, raccoons, mink and owls. Eagles and bobcats can kill a crane of any age. One peregrine falcon of far smaller size killed an adult of 3.1 kilograms in a dive.

A crane fights back rather than fleeing when it has chicks. Against a bird of prey it jumps and kicks with both feet. Against a dog or a coyote it walks forward, hisses and spreads its wings. If that fails it stabs with the bill and can drive the point through a skull. In Florida large introduced snakes take cranes as well. The birds also carry at least 24 kinds of parasite.

Population and conservation

The IUCN lists the sandhill crane as Least Concern. The lesser sandhill crane numbers about 400,000 and is the commonest crane alive. The greater sandhill crane now stands near 100,000 birds. That form was down to fewer than 1,000 birds by 1940. Cranes were wiped out east of the Mississippi in the 1930s. That region held an estimated 98,000 birds again by 2018.

The three southern subspecies remain scarce. Resident birds cannot move on when their marsh is drained. About 25 breeding pairs of the Mississippi form were left in 2013. A refuge set up in 1975 runs the largest crane release programme in the world. Nine birds in ten at that refuge came from a captive flock. The Cuban population has risen to around 700 birds.

Hunting is legal in 17 states, and Nebraska is the exception on the Central Flyway. Wetland drainage and competition with snow geese add to the pressure. Even so, the species has spread north and east since about 2000. Wisconsin and Indiana have seen the strongest return. Watchers have logged 84,327 records of the crane on iNaturalist.

Relationship with humans

For part of the year the crane and the farmer probably share the same fields. Flocks clear waste grain, insects and rodents from stubble. They also feed on standing crops, which makes them a pest in some places. United States law protects the species, and it is listed on Appendix II of CITES.

New Mexico runs a hunt by permit, drawn in a lottery each late autumn. The Platte River gathering in Nebraska draws thousands of visitors each spring. A crane festival is held every November at a refuge in New Mexico. Captive breeding and release have kept the rarest subspecies alive. A Mississippi crane was the first bird hatched from frozen and thawed sperm.

Sandhill cranes were once used as foster parents for whooping crane chicks. The plan failed, because the young whoopers grew up thinking they were sandhills. They later tried to pair with the wrong species. A postage stamp of 2023 carried the Mississippi sandhill crane. The design came from a wildlife photography project and was dedicated in South Dakota.

In culture and myth

Many Native American peoples read a crane as a sign of good luck. In Anishinaabe tradition the crane stands for leadership and for skill in speech. In Cheyenne tradition the sandhill crane is linked with lightning. Chippewa, Menominee, Hopi and Zuni communities all keep Crane clans. Creek and Chumash people hold crane dances.

In an Assiniboine story the sandhill crane gains its brown feathers. In a Cherokee story the crane races the hummingbird. In a Navajo story the frog and the crane rescue people from a fire. In Wabanaki stories the crane is vain and easy to flatter.

Cranes carry meaning far beyond North America as well. Pliny the Elder wrote that a flock posts sentries who hold a stone while on watch. Heraldry still shows a crane with a stone in its foot as a sign of watchfulness. In East Asian art the crane stands beside pines and tortoises for long life. The Mothman reports of the 1960s are often explained as a stray sandhill crane.