A First!

This is very much a life bird for me. A notice went out from the Monticello Bird Club alert email thingy last night that a sandhill crane was spotted over near the airport. I thought "Huh!" given that the airport is a 20 minute drive for me. This morning a second alert said "Still there!" and described exactly where. So I hopped in the car and tootled over there arriving at 7:09 AM. And there he was - exactly as advertised!! Perfect. Complete with a place to pull over and stick the camera out the window. He seemed unperturbed.

If you look at the range map on the Cornell site, you will see (presuming you know where Virginia is) that these birds not only do not either nest or winter here, they don't even fly OVER us when migrating. And yet. I hope he manages to find his way back on course and head to wherever he was headed. 

If you look at the map of the US in the link above, Virginia is on the east coast, midway up, and directly to the right (east) of Kentucky. The cranes typically migrate over Tennessee and Kentucky, it would appear.

Edit: Forgot I was going to post another shot of it as an extra.