Hey all,
Happy crane season! On Monday the 23 rd of February we estimated 115,000 +/- 6,000 Sandhill Cranes between Chapman and Overton, NE, along the Platte River. On February 12 th, we estimated around 50,000 cranes in the area. These numbers are definitely on the high end for this time of year! While this week’s count isn’t quite as high as the record from 2024, it well surpasses the average for the second week of migration (see below). In fact, the abundance of cranes in the area surpass the average of week 3 (see below).
10-year average last week: 12,700
10-year max last week: 38,000 (2024)
10-year average current week: 44,500
10-year max current week: 123,000 (2024)
10-year average next week: 108,300
10-year max next week: 272,000 (2024)
This points to a very interesting trend that we’ve been seeing occur for the last two decades. Caven et al. (2019) found that cranes are, on average, arriving one day earlier each year and this trend continues to hold true. Average peak for the entire CPRV between 2002 and 2017 was around March 24 th . Using the last 10 years of data (2016-2025) average peak has moved forward by about 10 days! This explains why our count for week 2 is fairly close to our average count for week 3!
We have cranes in every bridge segment from Chapman to Kearney! The majority are between Highway 34 to Wood River (which is typical for early in the season).
In fact, one of our GPS tracked Sandhill Cranes first visited Rowe Sanctuary when reaching the Platte. Currently, 3 of our 5 tracked cranes are on the Platte River already! The other 2 are still hanging out Northwest of Amarillo and in South Central Texas. We will start this year’s banding field season in the next few weeks to add more tracked Sandhill Cranes to our study.
