Tall yard birds

Once you start feeding birds or otherwise making your yard more attractive for wildlife, almost anything could show up.  Here's a family of Sandhill Cranes at a feeder in St. Cloud, Florida.  While we often think of Sandhill Cranes as birds of wild prairies, meadows, or wetlands, they are fairly regular yard birds in Florida. 

While deliberately attempting to feed Sandhill Cranes in your yard is not a good idea, if you do have them wandering around your neighborhood, it would be especially important to avoid using lawn pesticides or fertilizer pellets that might harm the birds.  For more information on how to reduce your use of lawn pesticides, see the Audubon At Home resources available online. 

Sometimes these birds fall victim to other suburban perils.  After several cranes were killed by cars near a middle school in the Tampa area, students rallied to get a wildlife crossing sign installed to slow down traffic (see news story here). 

To get a sense of what folks in Florida are dealing with, take a look at these videos on YouTube (one, two, three, four). And while hand-feeding Sandhill Cranes may look fun and harmless, people need to remember that these are large wild birds that can easily inflict damage with their large and sharp beaks.  Like all wild animals, they should be given their due space.

Photo: Frank & Peggy Malloy