Like Martin, and I suspect many others on this list, I've gently attempted to convince people that they were seeing Great Blue Herons and not cranes. Part of the problem is that "crane" is a time-honored vernacular term for Great Blue Herons, and many an amateur naturalist has learned that term at the foot of another, sometimes quite knowledgeable, senior amateur naturalist. Such people are never easily dissuaded. The point to remember is that they're not really wrong; it's just that they're working with fuzzy terminology. So I always just explain the difference to them, and let them know that they're right, but put them wise to the "correct" term in current usage among birders and ornithologists.

Jim McCoy
Marblehead, MA
jfmccoy at hotmail.com