MIGRATING SANDHILL CRANES wintering in the Central Valley of California (Pixley National Wildlife Refuge)
The best times to see the cranes is half an hour either side of both sunrise and sunset. The central of the three photographs above looks like a “murmuration”. On the right of this one can see the snow-capped Sierra Nevada to the west of the Valley. The Refuge is surrounded on all sides by extensive agricultural land and orchards to where the cranes fly during the day to forage, returning only at night to roost in and on the edges of the wetland.
