Bird is the Word!

As we set out on our walk this morning, M and I saw a couple of big birds pecking the grass in front of our next-door neighbor's house. They weren't yellow, like that Sesame Street one that Mitt Romney was gunning for before the election. These were sandhill cranes, and there are quite a few of them in our area. But this was the closest I've seen them to our house.

We walked on past them, and they started walking along with us, not paying any attention to us, but just poking around for their breakfast. As they did, they kept making these chortling, chattering noises. They make these sounds almost all the time, whether they're flying or walking.

Not too surprisingly, we didn't have our camera with us. So I can't post our own pictures to show you what they look like. That, of course, is where Google rides to the rescue. Behold, a pair of sandhill cranes pretty much like ours:

The four of us kind of walked along together to the corner and around it, and then the cranes started moving away from us, because I tend to stop and smell the roses a lot, if you get my drift. A little while later we saw them way down a side street. We tried to catch up to them, but before we could get there they flew away. Here's what they look like when they fly (again courtesy of Google):

To hear the strange sounds they make, click this link and open the WAV file in Windows Media Player or whatever music program you use.