Platte River Sandhill Crane Migration

Audubon Sanctuary (Iain Nicolson Audubon Center At Rowe Sanctuary); Spring Staging Area On The Central Platte River · Gibbon, Nebraska

Every spring, roughly from late February to early April, a stretch of the Platte River in central Nebraska between about Grand Island and Kearney becomes the staging ground for most of the world's sandhill cranes. Counts are often described as around half a million to a million birds, which would be the large majority of the species at one time; treat the figure as an estimate that changes year to year. The cranes stop for several weeks on the way north from Texas, New Mexico and Mexico to breeding grounds in Canada, Alaska and Siberia, eating waste corn in the fields by day to build fat and roosting at night standing in the shallow braided channels of the river, where water protects them from predators. The famous sight is the roost flight: tens of thousands of grey birds pouring onto the sandbars at dusk and lifting off at dawn, with a rolling, rattling call you hear before you see them. Audubon's Rowe Sanctuary near Gibbon and the Crane Trust near Wood River run guided viewing blinds, and there are free public viewing spots. Outside the season it is a quiet river.

44450 Elm Island Road, Gibbon, Nebraska, 68840, United States

NO OPENING TIME HERE WAS CHECKED. The typical pattern: guided blinds run only in the crane season, roughly early March to early April, with dawn sessions meeting before sunrise (around 5:30 to 6:30 am Central time, shifting as sunrise moves) and dusk sessions starting a couple of hours before sunset. The Rowe and Crane Trust visitor centres keep longer daily hours in season and shorter hours, sometimes weekdays only, the rest of the year; check. Public decks and bridges can be used any time. The traps that ruin a day are coming outside the season and finding no cranes, arriving late to a blind after the group has walked out (latecomers are usually turned away), and losing a dawn to an I-80 closure. Confirm current times before relying on them.

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