Illustration by Christina Mattison Ebert

Illustrator Christina Mattison Ebert shares depictions and information on coastal birds

Antigone canadensis

If you’ve spent any significant amount of time on the upper Texas coast, you know there’s a distinctive trumpeting call signaling the arrival of November and that call belongs to the sandhill crane, a sizable soaring bird that winters here for several months.

Here, sandhill cranes gather in small flocks in fields, pastures and wetlands to forage for food. Even from a distance, they often are easy to spot, standing at about 5 feet in height with a distinctive red crown and drooping tail feathers. Sandhill cranes boast wingspans up to 7 feet.

FUN FACT: In early spring on Nebraska’s Platte River, a tremendous exhibition of North American natural life occurs — up to half a million sandhill cranes (about 80 percent of the global population) gather along the river as a pit stop during their migration north.