Sandhill Cranes at the Nebraska Nature & Visitor's Center

We arrived at the Nebraska Nature and Visitor Center late in the afternoon. We already had reservations for the blind, but we wanted to look around the visitor center too. The visitor center had displays of the local birds, including different types of Sandhill Cranes (lesser and greater), a gift shop, a movie theatre and many beautiful photographs of the sandhill cranes and the local wildlife.

The staff showed us a nice video about the cranes and gave us a short talk before we all drove down to the parking lot near the river, which was about 1 mile away. The blinds were quite nice, we had large glass windows and chairs. We had a good view of the river, but we were about 1/4 mile from where the nearest birds landed and about 100' above them. This gave us another view of the cranes, especially nice views of them coming in for a landing, but we were not very close. You will need a very long lens to take pictures from these blinds.

Unfortunately we got a late start, after the staff answered our questions and we got everyone into the cars the light was going away. When we arrived at the blind some of the birds had already arrived and it quickly got too dark to shoot anything but silhouettes.