A couple days ago Ed Bowen sent some photos of sandhill cranes passing over on Sunday.
The regular e-mailer from the south suburbs said,
I had a small flock go over on Sunday. I think they are a little early going to Jasper Pulaski area?I suspected he was right, in part because of a few days ago. While driving south on Route 1, I saw a large bird in a ditch and assumed it was a great blue heron. Then it hit me, hey, that was a sandhill crane. And over the past week or so, I have heard their croaking several mornings.
Naturally, Bowen's note nudged me to check the status of the sandhills at Jasper-Pulaski Fish & Wildlife Area, south of Valparaiso, Ind.
If you have never visited Jasper-Pulaski when sandhills at their peak, I highly recommend you schedule a day in November, when their numbers can top 20,000.
Normally, updates are posted at http://www.in.gov/dnr/fishwild/3109.htm#updates. But it is early, and none were listed yet. So I called the site.
They expect to begin doing the formal counts next week, but Jason said, ``There are plenty here now,'' and they had a conservative rough estimate of two or three thousand already there.
Jasper Pulaski is SE of Valparaiso off of Rt. 421
As to the reports of the sandhills being early, I've been seeing them along the Kankakee for 3 weeks now...not the gigantic flocks like I'm used to seeing, just coming in like stragglers.
Last year, I saw far too many that were shot by hunter and left alongside the road like trash...a practice that needs to stop!