Upcoming talk by Tim Banks

The last speaker for this fall is our very own Tim Banks. Please join us for his talk entitled "Sandhill Crane Natural History and Behavior (and More!)" next Wednesday, 19 November at the Berry Center auditorium. We will also hold board member elections during this meeting; if you are a member of the Laramie Audubon Society you can vote to confirm or oppose election or re-election of board members. If you can't attend the talk, you can vote online here.

Schedule of events
6:30 pm - Mingling and refreshments
7:00 pm - Election of board members
7:15 pm - Sandhill Crane program

Below, Tim gives us a sneak peek of his talk.

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Sandhill Crane. Photo © Tim Banks.

Cranes are the stuff of magic, whose voices penetrate the atmosphere of the world's wilderness areas, from arctic tundra to the South African veld, and whose footprints have been left on the wetlands of the world for the past 60 million years or more. - Paul Johnsgard

Standing up to 46 inches tall and with a wingspan of six feet, a sandhill crane is an impressive bird. Put together 500,000 of them during the peak of spring migration in central Nebraska, and you have one of the most awe-inspiring wildlife spectacles in North America. That alone may make a road trip to view these magnificent birds well worth the effort, but there is much, much more to their story.

For one thing, these birds have charisma! They dance, they bicker, they fight--sandhill cranes, like all cranes, are social and their interactions suggest that there is a lot more drama within the flock than you might imagine at first glance. The more you know about their behavior, the more fascinating these birds become.

The goal of this talk is to introduce you to some of "the rest of the story" of cranes in North America, to inspire you to take a trip to see them, and to  entertain you with amusing anecdotes about just how the speaker came to learn some of these things. You will learn, for example, how this guy contributed to a lifetime of fascination with cranes.