Sandhill Cranes and Canadian geese. There is safety in numbers and with the ever attentive 'radar' of these two avian migrating species in a field together, nothing is going to get past the wary sentinels.
Sandhills ride warm air currents, from what I've observed, like these five high over my head. They lazily circle gaining elevation until they're all but invisible to our eye. We listen closely for their calls in the spring.
Canadian geese are typically the avian symbol of the North, although many winter only as far south as water remains open all year around like around generating plants in cities like Saint Cloud and Minneapolis/Saint Paul on the Mississippi River. Their calls turn our heads as gaggles of flocks migrating northward ascend onto fields and into nesting areas along the Thief Lake and Red Lake Rivers, in the Agassiz and Thief Lake refuges, Lake of the Woods, and also Mikinaak Creek and the South fork of the Roseau River.
People of 'true north' Minnesota (From Holt, Minnesota and north to the border) recognize the difference in voice between Canadian geese and their cousins 'Snow' and 'Blue' geese, when sadly, other Minnesotans do not.
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