Monday morning while driving back to Duluth from the Twin Cities I stopped by Crex Meadows. I left by 5:30 am which allowed me to reach Crex 1/2 hour before sunrise. While hundreds, if not thousands of Sandhill Cranes leave Crex each morning to feed in surrounding farm fields, before killing frosts hit this area of western Wisconsin the marshes / sedges grasses of Crex are also popular feeding spots. Why visit a corn field when there is  lots of food in the marsh? The Minnesota DNR says this about habitat (Crex is just east of Minnesota into Wisconsin): “In Minnesota, nesting habitat consists of lowland emergent marshes and meadows dominated by sedges and grasses, often with stands of phragmites, cattails, bulrush, and wild rice occurring in deeper water in larger basins.”

Here are a whole lot of images I took … starting at 7:00 am, 30 minutes before sunrise, till about 9 am.

Before Sunrise

Flying into the Sedge Grasses minutes before sunrise

A Mass Take-Off Event from the Main Dike Road

Feeding after Sunrise