MOUND CITY, Mo. – It hasn’t happened for more than a century — until now.
The Missouri Department of Conservation says a pair of sandhill cranes with two colts nested at Loess Bluffs National Wildlife Refuge in Holt County, near Mound City last month.
Sandhill cranes are tall and gangly. They are slate gray with a red crown on their heads and disappeared from Missouri by the late 1800s, according to the Missouri Department of Conservation.
Experts say the sandhill cranes are a rare sight in the Show-Me State. Nesting pairs are even more scarce.
The Missouri Department of Conservation lists the cranes as a species of conservation concern.
From the early 1900s until the 1990s the cranes all but disappeared in the state. Since then, a new nests have been documented at the Loess Bluffs National Wildlife Refuge as well as at wetlands at Grand Pass near Marshall, Eagle Bluffs in Columbia, and Perry Wildlife area in Bates City.
The Missouri Department of Conservation says any migrating sandhill cranes in spotted in western Missouri likely come from flocks that breed in Canada west of Hudson Bay.
Flocks of sandhill cranes in eastern Missouri may come from flocks that breed in northern Midwestern states and southern Ontario.
The Show-Me state falls between the two main migration routes, according to the state department of conservation, which is why they aren’t often seen in Missouri.