A clot of fog had settled over the wetlands off Oil Can road making it just that much more difficult for Keith Fielding to get a glimpse of the rare bird he’d woken up so early for. It was a cold morning for May, but Keith reasoned it was worth any slight discomfort to be able to snap some photos of the errant long-necked flyer that had recently been seen nearby and, at the same time, check the breed off his personal watch list. The lion’s share of Sandhill’s mated and nested around Nebraska’s Platte River, at least that’s what he’d been told. He’d heard the Sandhill crane sometimes made its home as far east as New York State, but not this far south. The specimen was considered an uncommon sight where Keith lived in the Lower Hudson Valley.
By eight am, Keith already had his camera on the tripod set up on the apex of the circular path that rimmed the wetlands. As he sipped his coffee, he noticed a harrier hovering nearby along with a couple of black vultures circling higher above. The…
Keep reading with a 7-day free trial
Subscribe to The Jones Reader to keep reading this post and get 7 days of free access to the full post archives.