The Sandhill Crane,
Grus canadensis, is very tall (34-48"), with a long neck and legs. Its wingspan is 6 feet, 8 inches. Its coloring is largely gray, with red forehead; the immature Sandhill is browner, no red on head. Plumage often appears rusty because of iron stains from water of tundra ponds.
The voice is a loud rattling kar-r-r-r-o-o-o.
The Sandhill can be found in large freshwater marshes, prairie ponds, and marshy tundra; also on prairies and grainfields during migration and in winter. There the female lays 2 buff eggs, spotted with brown, in a large mound of grass and aquatic plants in an undisturbed marsh.
The Sandhill breeds from Siberia and Alaska east across Arctic Canada to Hudson Bay and south to western Ontario, with isolated populations in Rocky Mountains, northern prairies, and Great Lakes region, and in Mississippi, Georgia and Florida. It winters in California's Central Valley, and across southern states from Arizona to Florida. Also in Cuba.The Sandhill Crane was always more numerous than the larger Whooping Crane. The fact that it breeds mostly in the remote Arctic has saved it from the fate of its relative. But it is sensitive to human disturbance, and due to the draining of marshes there are reduced nesting populations in the United States. These cranes migrate in great flocks and group in vast numbers at places such as the Platte River in Nebraska.
