Jim Brewster, following up on his earlier report of cranes on the outer
Olympic Peninsula, wrote:

>Reto Riesen wrote:
>
>> would there be a possibility that the Sandhill Crane could have been Great
>> Blue Herons? More normal habitat for them?
>
>Hi:
>
>Actually that ID was my first thought. ... I would not have been
>able to make a positive ID, but after it landed on the sand bar and I watched
>it and compared it with my book, from my limited bird ID background would say
>it was a sandhill.

For my part, the aspect of these sightings that surprised me was that the
birds were seen as solitary, and that they landed on the ground. Certainly,
many people mistake herons for cranes, but I think we can be pretty
confident of Jim's identification because of his description of their
physical characteristics -- plus the fact that cranes do make a notable
migration over that portion of the peninsula, at this time of year. I
worked in the woods around Forks back in the fall of 1994 and was
pleasantly shocked to discover significant movements of low-flying flocks
of cranes. Hearing them always made me stop what I was doing to look up.
They were awesomely beautiful, and that yodeling call is haunting...

-- Janet Hardin
Port Townsend, WA
wings at olympus.net