In the birding world a morning fly-out, or an evening fly-in, can be a thrilling sight. The Winter Wings Bird Festival at Klamath Falls every February features pre-dawn trips to a dead-end road where you can see numerous Bald Eazgles fly out from their communal overnight roost. And this morning I got to watch a smaller, but wonderful, fly-out right in front of my house. Let’s call it the Ashland Fly-out. Our local Wild Turkeys roost overnight in the tall trees of Lithia Park along Granite Street. Mostly thery roost in Douglas-fir. And I tried to get shots of the big guys flying out, one-by-one, chirping and squawking as they took wing from forty feet up.
Here’s a youtube video of a Snow Goose fly-out in New Mexico. You can see the same thing at Sacramento Wildlife Refuge just off Exit 585 on Interstate 5 in Glenn County, CA. And there a small fraction of the geese will be the less abundant Ross’s.
The greatest fly-out I’ve ever seen was in Nebraska on a sub-freezxinf March morning along the Platte River when thousands of Sandhill Cranes bugle, shuffle about and then lift out in a swirling cloud of cranes. Here’s a video of a crane fly-out. Here’s one of cranes moving about. Here’s one of them on their roost island, uttering their ancient calls. The cranes in Nebraska I believe to be the finest wildlife spectacle that survives in North America.
