As usual, I heard them before I saw them, a “churring” call echoing off the low clouds. There they were, a ragged line high above me — sandhill cranes running before the storm.

The High Plains, including the Front Range, are going to get our first major winter storm starting tonight — and it’s shaping up to be a doozy. By tomorrow evening, temperatures will be in the teens, and we’ll have 4-10″ of snow.

As fast as these birds were flying, they will be in Pueblo, one hundred miles south, by tonight. That will put them south of Palmer Divide, which diverts the worst of the winter storms sweeping down from the north to the east.

But how do I know that they were sandhill cranes? They were high in the sky and I couldn’t see many details.

First, there was the number. All together, I saw three skeins of sandhills fly over, each with 20-40 birds in their ragged “V” formations. Geese don’t tend to fly in such big formations, at least not along the Front Range. The formation was ragged, not the military-straight “V” that geese form.

I know the figures are small in the photos, but you can see that some of the birds have their wings pushing forward to be even with their heads. Geese are much stiffer fliers, with wingbeats more up and down than forward and back.

Finally, there was their call — “Chur! Chur!”, not honking of geese.

Sandhill cranes summer from Steamboat Springs to Canada and Alaska. A few hardy birds even cross to Siberia to lay their eggs and raise their young before heading south to New Mexico, and the Gulf Coast to winter. On their way, they often stop in the San Luis Valley to refuel.

Not these birds. They are going as far as they can today. Fly high, fly fast, my friends. Let the storm carry you home.

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On a different topic, The Colorado Sun online newspaper has an article about my favorite lagomorphs — pika! and the Pika Project, which I’ve written about frequently.