The rain began around 3am and continued throughout the morning, but the cranes didn’t mind it at all. In fact they seemed to hang around the river longer because of it.
Spending time with them you begin to pick up physical cues that they are about to depart. A few will do a kind of lean and lock forward…waiting I guess for others in the group to come on board with the idea of departure. Sometimes they abort this posture and hang around longer, but often, it seems to tell the other birds to get ready to go.
By 10am all of the birds…tens of thousands of them I would guess since they covered much of the river from west to east as far as you could see…had departed for the fields and meadows around the Platte…while the rains continued throughout the day.