At Four-Mile Lake

On summer evenings an hour or so before sunset, over 100 sandhill cranes gather on the shore of Four Mile Lake,
which is a bit east of Chelsea. This year a very rare whooping crane has joined the flock. Less than 600
whooping cranes still survive -- but that's excellent, because at one point there were only 15 of them. (source)

Whoopers are very large birds! We have seen a few in Texas and Florida,
where most of the survivors spend the winter. At most one or two come to Michigan.  

We watched as more and more sandhill cranes landed for the night.
Sometimes they call to each other with an almost barking cry.

While enjoying the sight and sounds of the cranes, we also watched bees and
other birds and enjoyed the late evening sunset.

The trees at the lakeshore are home to a flock of cedar waxwings.

Photos published at maefood dot blogspot dot com. All content copyright © 2019 by Mae & Len Sander. If you read this post at another blog, it's a pirated version.