Keith Harmon Snow shot this photo last Sunday and then sent it to the Gazette along with this note: On Easter Sunday between the hours of 6:30 a.m. and 9 a.m. a rare Sandhill crane visited Wildemere Farm (belonging to my uncle Ralmon Black and my grandfather Lewis Black before him) on Hyde Hill Road in Williamsburg. A few hundred robins were working the field, and I could hear blue jays and a red-headed woodpecker I know to be excavating the remains of a giant maple. I spotted the crane, almost 4 feet tall, some 200 yards upfield from our Egesta Farm. It saw me creeping behind a maple tree along our stone wall, but it stood still and allowed me to shoot it with a 500 mm lens and a tripod, before it turned and began the meander in the opposite direction.
He says this is the second Sandhill he has seen. The first was in a Goshen marsh in May of 2015, where it also allowed him to photograph it from afar, but in a boat and without tripod.
He added this piece of information: The Brown or Sandhill Crane has always been rare in Massachusetts, which is the far east and north of its U.S. range, and it is easily distinguished from the herons because the crane flies straight-necked, the heron with neck bent.
Photo by KEITH HARMON SNOW of Williamsburg
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