A sandhill crane flies over Baldwin Beach in Lake Tahoe in March. (Image: Jared Manninen)

With a wingspan of 7 feet and height of 4 feet, sandhill cranes are a presence.

But what really sets them apart is the sound they make.

“They have a cool voice. Their call, you can hear it like a mile away. It’s kind of like a croak,” Ian Souza-Cole with Audubon California said.

South Shore wildlife photographer Jared Manninen had no idea what he was hearing while hiking at Angora Resort in October 2017.

“It was funny because I heard and saw these big birds making a dinosaur-like croaking. I thought something was drastically wrong with these geese. It was almost haunting,” he said.

Later Manninen learned those were sandhill cranes flying overhead.

Sandhill have only recently returned to the Lake Tahoe Basin.

“Sandhill crane populations, like many other species, experienced steep declines due to overhunting, habitat loss, and human presence in nesting habitat,” Shay Zanetti, forest wildlife biologist with the Lake Tahoe Basin Management Unit, said. “The building of the Tahoe Keys was a huge loss of habitat on the South Shore of Lake Tahoe. Sandhill cranes have likely been absent from the Lake Tahoe basin for 100 years.”

One was detected in the basin in 2008, with nesting taking place since 2018, according to Zanetti. Five breeding pairs have been sighted in Tahoe. Usually one colt—what a baby sandhill crane is called—is born a season.

These cranes mate for life.

Souza-Cole said there are about 10,000 greater sandhill cranes in the world.

“In more recent history they were hunted. They are still hunting a lot of sandhill cranes in other states,” he said. “In the Western states this specific subspecies was overhunted. That led to dwindling populations and lot of habitat loss.”

Their numbers dropped so dangerously low that California and Nevada have given the greater sandhill crane protected status; the former doing so in the 1970s.

Sandhill and whooping cranes are the two types of cranes that call North America home. Six subspecies of sandhill crane live on the continent, with the greater, lesser and Canadian found in California. The greater are in Nevada.

According to the Nevada Department of Wildlife website, “The two largest staging areas in Nevada, and good places to view sandhill cranes, are in Ruby Valley and Lamoille Valley located southeast of Elko. During the spring migration, the birds have a stopover in Lund, Nevada, where they stay for several weeks.”

Tahoe is an ideal location for them to summer because sandhill cranes like fresh water and marshy areas. Boggy environments in the Sierra and Cascades are where they breed.

It’s not known where the Tahoe cranes winter, but it could be the Central Valley because it has a large population of these birds.

Their size is what impresses Manninen.

“I’m only 5-foot-6, so I’m not exactly standing eye-to-eye, but when you stand across a field it looks like it’s as big as you are,” the Meyers resident said. “They are very striking in appearance with the crimson capped bill. You can see the nostrils in the bill. They have holes in the bills so they can breathe when their bill is closed. They have really yellow eyes with dark pupils.”

Jenny Sweatt, a birder who lives in South Lake Tahoe, has seen a sandhill crane every year since 2015—at Cove East, Baldwin Beach in the meadow, Upper Truckee Marsh, Pope Marsh, Martis Lake area, and Grass Lake.

“They are beautiful large birds with a feathery plume for a tail that reminds me of an ostrich. I love hearing their unique call, a rattling bugle, which they do often when flying and sometimes when on the ground,” Sweatt said. “If they are around, you’ll likely hear them before seeing them. They nest on the ground, which must be challenging with coyotes or if a dog is running free in the marsh.”

According to Zanetti, “Eggs and young could be prey for raptors, coyotes, or bobcats. Due to their size, adult birds would not be a common prey item for most mammal species, but old or infirm individuals could be taken by larger meat-eating mammals.”

Sandhill cranes are omnivores. They dine on a variety of plants like berries and tubers, as well as mice, worms and snails.

Note: A version of this story first appeared in Tahoe In Depth.