Most sandhill cranes fly north for the summer, spending the season in Siberia, across Alaska and through Canada to western Quebec and down into the northern states. With their migrations, some spanning thousands of miles, sandhills seem to signal the joy of spring’s beginning and the bittersweet beauty of autumn. But size and beauty aren’t the only things that make sandhill cranes special. An adult stands 38–48 inches high, has a wingspan of 6–7 feet and weighs 7–12 pounds. People say, “Bald is beautiful,” but does that explain why some can’t get enough of watching cranes? Maybe their fabulous height is part of the attraction. Sandhill cranes have two more features that distinguish them from other birds: tufted feathers going over the rump and a bright red, bald forehead. Their very long neck is an elegant exclamation mark above a slender body and long, dark gray legs. Gray overall, some birds sport rust-colored staining on their outer feathers. For one thing, they are subtly lovely to look at. Many people find sandhill cranes fascinating. And there is no one point on the map where we can say, “Desert sheep end here and Rocky Mountain sheep start there.” Rather, there is a gradual transition from one subspecies to another, with a fair amount of overlap along the way - a phenomenon known to biologists as a “cline.” –Randall D. The two desert subspecies are leaner and smaller than their Rocky Mountain cousin, but all three can be very difficult to tell apart. Did You Know?Īrizona is home to three subspecies of bighorn sheep. This Wild Life features stories of people, wildlife and the outdoors. I’m working toward a biology degree and hoping to work with Arizona Game and Fish again.” –Noah Ratliff Now that the summer is over, I’m back at Northern Arizona University. Most of all, though, I got to spend a summer having fun with great people in great places. I learned where sheep live, what kind of terrain they like and that they can eat through the worst cactus like it was candy. I hadn’t seen anything like it in the desert mountains before.ĭuring this great summer internship, I saw and hiked in places I had never known were there. I also had the pleasure of bouldering up a canyon after a rainstorm and finding a hanging garden. I don’t understand how they grow up there, but they were the best thing I saw all day. There is nothing like spending half a day trying to get up a steep ridge line in triple-digit temperatures and then finding a beautiful stand of cottonwoods at the top of a canyon. They were hell to get to, but still incomparable. This internship took me to some really cool places. I’m still not sure how they deal with the thorns, but they don’t seem to mind. I also saw what they eat, chomping down on prickly pear and cholla. I’ve hiked out to some of these sites, and there is no way any person would be able to climb up to the point the sheep reached. It was amazing to sit across a canyon from a group of sheep and see them climb up a near-vertical cliff. I also honed my radiotelemetry skills looking for sheep. I had lots of practice recording data while on the side of a mountain.
Back at the truck, about 13 hours later, I wondered if I would survive the summer.įortunately, this internship with the Arizona Game and Fish Department got easier after that. Hiking the Pontotoc Ridge Trail, I felt like I had been put on the Stairmaster from hell. We hit the trail at what felt like 100 degrees Fahrenheit. I was a new intern on a bighorn sheep predation study in the Santa Catalina Mountains in Tucson. “On my first day of field work, I thought I was going to die. Mark Your Calendar: River Walk at the San Pedro River.
Walk on the Wild Side: Whitewater Draw Wildlife Area.Wild+Life is a new monthly e-newsletter with news about wildlife-watching activities, wildlife natural history, habitat and research projects benefitting wildlife, fun facts and upcoming events.
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