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Sandhill cranes are settling in for their six-week stay on the Platte River Valley.
“From about Valentine's Day to Tax Day is our window of time,” Crane Trust lead biologist Bethany Ostrom said.
Mid-March is typically considered “peak migration” for crane enthusiasts, but that peak covers the entire Platte River Valley, which Ostrom said is impossible to see in one visit. Rather, she said, any time during migration is a good time to see the cranes.
“At the Crane Trust, a lot of our birds are actually coming earlier in the season,” Ostrom said.
Crane Trust is between Grand Island and Hastings. In Kearney, Ostrom said, cranes are coming a bit later than average. And for late visitors, there could be an extra perk to missing the so-called peak.
“In late March, you might have a better chance of seeing a really rare whooping crane, because they come a little bit later in the season,” Ostrom said.
And as Nebraska’s climate warms and becomes more mild, cranes are even staying over winter.
“We've had like 35,000 Sandhill cranes stay in the central Platte over the entire winter, which is highly unusual,” Ostrom said. “We think they're staying here because of the unusually warm winters – the mild conditions. There's not much snow cover to cover up the food that they're looking for, and so it makes it really easy for them to stay here and not have to expend any more energy to migrate further south to warmer conditions.”
Ostrom also said migration is a learned behavior in Sandhill cranes, meaning younger generations with parents who wintered on the Platte may not have learned to fly South.
A 2019 study found Sandhill cranes’ “peak” migration day was arriving a day earlier each year, mostly due to those milder winter conditions.
“On average, these birds are coming sooner and then they're staying longer on the Platte, so that means there's going to be a bigger congregation of birds here at a time,” Ostrom said.
That’s why, Ostrom added, last year’s migration was the largest ever recorded; nearly the whole population of cranes was visiting at one time.
Each week of migration, Ostrom and the Crane Trust team fly over the Platte River Valley to estimate the number of crane visitors. Ostrom said this year’s Sandhill crane counts show evidence of them arriving a week early.
“Our week one flight had numbers that were more like week two averages historically, and our week two flight had averages that were like our week three flights,” Ostrom said. “So, that’s pointing towards the cranes coming earlier.”
According to a Mar. 12 estimate from Crane Trust, there are 494,000 Sandhill cranes on the Platte, plus or minus 74,000.
The migration sensation
The incremental changes to Sandhill cranes’ migration patterns may influence when they arrive on the Platte, but Ostrom said tourists haven’t quite caught up.
“There's a lot of messaging that has been ingrained in people and birders that come to the area that it's only going to be good if it's during the middle of March,” Ostrom said. “But in reality – especially around the Grand Island area – early March is where it's at. Then you're also going to get your geese migrating through – some different ducks. You're going to get diversity and just sheer abundance of all these birds.”
As hundreds of thousands of cranes form this spectacular sight each year, tourists from across the globe follow.
A 2025 impact study showed tourism nearly doubled compared to the last study in 2017.
From hotel rooms to gasoline, a University of Nebraska Lincoln Bureau of Business Research study tracked Sandhill crane visitors’ spending. In 2025, visitors had a $28 million economic impact on central Nebraska – double the impact from the last study in 2017.
The report estimates nearly 35,000 visitors came to central Nebraska during 2025’s crane season. Tourism generated over $700,000 in state tax revenue and increased full-year equivalent employment by 20%.
Between a state wrestling tournament, national and state conventions, and the crane migration, Visit Kearney executive director Sarah Focke said March is a very busy month for the city.
“We aren’t your average community where you can just show up on a whim one evening and be expected to find a hotel room,” Focke said.
The largest share of Sandhill crane visitors – about 20% – are from Nebraska, but 15% are from neighboring states like Colorado, Minnesota and Iowa. Nearly all central Nebraska visitors cited Sandhill cranes as their primary reason for visiting the area.