Stately sandhill cranes — with wingspans of more than 6 feet and a history dating to the Pleistocene — have begun swooping into a wildlife area southeast of Tombstone in their annual migration from mountain states and parts of Canada.
“They absolutely filled the sky when they took off against the rising sun as a backdrop. It was a beautiful sight,” said Mark Hart, a spokesman for the Arizona Game and Fish Department, who observed the cranes at the Whitewater Draw Wildlife Area last weekend. He said about 1,400 cranes were roosting there last week, and as many as 15,000 or more could arrive in the coming months.
“It will be even more dramatic when all the cranes have come in,” Hart said. “They take off right around sunrise, and the sound they make is primordial. There is nothing quite like the call of a sandhill crane” — sometimes described as a loud, trumpeting sound.
After feeding, often on grain from farm fields, they usually return to roost between noon and 4 p.m. at Whitewater Draw and other sites in the Sulphur Springs Valley south of Willcox.
Game and Fish biologists have described sandhill cranes, which are about 4 feet tall when standing upright, as “holdovers from the Pleistocene Epoch” nearly 2 million years ago. Some scientists say the species could be even older than that.
Hart said cranes typically begin arriving in Southern Arizona in mid-September to early October. “For the past few years, it’s been early October,” he said.
The birds usually begin leaving on their return migration in mid-February, but some have remained in Arizona until March or early April, Hart said.
The Whitewater Draw area is open to the pubic with no admission fees, but Hart said donations are welcome.
He advised visitors to bring footwear suitable for muddy conditions after periods of rainy weather.
