Noelle's Sandhill Cranes at Sunset

I took my 8-year-old daughter, who loves both animals and photography,with me to watch the Sandhill Crane migration this year. 500,0004-foot-tall birds stop in central Nebraska for six weeks each year enroute from Mexico to Siberia. They spend their days foraging for foodin cornfields near the river, but at night they seek shelter fromanimals in the wide, clear sandbars of the Platte River. It's quite asite to see 10,000 squawking birds in one spot. Better yet, they allland and take off at roughly the same time each sunset and sunrise.It's only a two hour drive from our house, so we made it into a 24hour camping trip.

Noelle captured these shots with our point & shoot camera from an oldrailroad (now hike+bike) bridge in Ft. Kearney State Rec Area. Theonly postprocessing I did was a slight crop. I set the camera tounderexpose by one stop, and she did the rest -- with a little helpfrom God's palette.