This month, sandhill cranes, Antigone canadensis, are traveling from the southern United States and Mexico to their summer breeding grounds. Arkansas is located between the flyways of two populations of sandhills—the cranes in the central flyway usually don’t travel east of Oklahoma, and the cranes in the eastern flyway don’t fly west of Tennessee—but nonetheless, eBird records 411 sightings of sandhill cranes in our state.
Their vast breeding area stretches from Quebec to Siberia, where mating pairs exclusively will occupy a square mile in which to raise their young. Juveniles stay with their parents for almost a year, through two migrations of 5,000 to 7,000 miles each. Cranes are the only birds that dance year-round.