Sandhill Cranes Taking Flight

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I saw my first sandhill cranes of the season today, April 23 2007, but I had heard some days before. They blew in with many other birds. These cranes will hatch and raise large, fuzzy chicks in the fields. This video was shot late july 2006. Clobbering with wing or stabbing with beak, cranes can potentially inflict lethal injuries on an adult human.

Huge and prehistoric-looking, their morphology evokes imagery of pteradactyls, but birds are taxonomically classified as dinosaurs. An entry in Wikipedia states-- "They have the longest fossil history of any extant bird, with 9 million year old fossil recorded of birds no different than our modern Sandhill Cranes."

UPDATE: They are back in large numbers. I heard them calling this morning. They make lots of noise as they fly over, as you can hear on this video.