On an early afternoon this week, a call came from an obviously excited neighbor in Decatur: “Step outside quick and look overhead," he said. "Two flocks of birds, flying real high. I can hear them honking. They’re geese or something. Beautiful.”
I knew immediately that they weren't geese, but sandhill cranes. I hurried out and looked up. Sure enough, two large flocks of sandhills, etched against a cloudless blue sky, were flying southbound in V-formations. I, too, could hear them calling -- loud, sonorous, trumpeting notes that sounded like a huge flock of chirping birds.
Few natural spectacles in Georgia generate as much thrill as high-flying sandhills, even for those of us who have seen them many times. So loud are sandhill cranes that they can be heard long before they are overhead. Jeff Sewell of Tucker is one of several veteran birders reporting crane sightings in recent days: “Between 12:25 and 12:40 p.m., about 1,550 cranes in many waves passed directly over our house or a bit to the east of it,” he said on Georgia birders' chat line. “I went outside hoping to see a few and was just blown away. This is by far the most we've ever had in the yard as we are a good bit east of the usual flyway.”
My friend Tom MacKenzie, who works for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service in Atlanta, e-mailed last week about sandhill flocks flying over his office at Century Center office park on Clairmont Road: “There were so many. They passed over my window heading south. I had to grab one of our passionate birders, Chuck Hunter, out of a meeting to help me identify if there might have been a whooping crane or two with them. Unfortunately, by the time we got down the elevator, they were pretty far south, but circling instead of the straight-line V formations I witnessed from my window.
“Chuck said they were seeking a thermal for additional altitude and to find favorable winds. It was stunning watching them circling higher and higher, then heading further south, out of sight.”
Most of the sandhills flying over now are migrating to winter grounds in southwest Georgia’s Okefenokee National Wildlife Refuge, central Florida and other points south. On the ground, sandhill cranes also are impressive because they stand nearly as tall as an adult person.
IN THE SKY: What’s usually the year's best meteor shower, the Geminids, will peak after midnight on Monday (early Tuesday morning) with about 50 meteors per hour, and continue through Thursday night. Look to the east from about midnight until dawn, said David Dundee, astronomer with Tellus Science Museum.
The moon will be first quarter on Monday -- in the south at sunset and setting around midnight. Mercury sets in the west less than an hour after the sun. Venus rises out of the east about two hours before dawn. Jupiter is high in the south at sunset and sets around midnight, and will appear near the moon on Monday night. Saturn rises out of the east about four hours before sunrise. Mars is not easily seen now.
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