Day 214
We had participated in the Annual Midwest Crane Count before but this was the first time we might not have to travel far to search for the birds. We were excited to see if we could make our farm an official observation site for the crane count. For the Birdathon, anyone could go birding anywhere. Maybe this is because of the fundraising aspect, the overall immensity of the amount of birds one could see, and/or the duration of the event. For the crane count, participants are looking for specific information about specific birds, so there were more limitations to the actual event. For example, the event was only a few early morning hours long on a specific date. People were assigned to specific locations so that any found birds were not counted twice. While no fundraising was directly related to the event, awareness and participation are certainly helpful in raising money.
To be an official site for the count, we needed to reach out to our county coordinator and see if our location was already part of a plotted out and assigned site. We felt great when we found out the zone in which our property was located had not been assigned a volunteer counter.
Until now.
We felt very fortunate to be able to officially participate in the crane count in our own backyard. Craneview Plainview was now an official participant in the Annual Midwest Crane Count. Having seen a crane family grow up in our own backyard and many, many others travel through, including a pair of whooping cranes. We couldn't wait to see and/or and add cranes to the official count.
But as usual, things didn't quite go as planned.
Similar to our Birdathon event, we angered Mother Nature and she let us know about it. The morning of the official crane count, we didn't see or hear any cranes. We did hear and see lots of rain, thunder, lightning, and wind. Not ideal conditions for birding.
Even though the Birdathon and Crane Count didn’t work out the way we envisioned, we knew these events (and citizen science in general) have a rich future ahead of them at our farm.
