[Wild Skies]

Mated pairs of Sandhill Cranes lead a challenging and often sorrowful life. And so it goes with our neighborhood pair of Sandhills. From our personal experience observed over the past 12 consecutive years, their success ratio of raising their young to the age of them migrating south in the fall to their wintering grounds is less than 50:50. This year's nesting produced two colts, as reported in my last post. But, about 3 weeks ago, one of their babies had gone missing, likely succumbing to one of the sharks existing in their world. So our pair of Sandhills have experienced the sorrow yet again and are now down to just one little one. We're crossing our fingers and hoping junior can make the journey south with its parents this fall.