[cobirds] Greater and Lesser Sandhill Cranes along the Front Range

COBirders,

  In the last issue (Vol. 51, No. 3, summer) of CFO’s Colorado Birds, Tony Lukering and Steve Mlodinow have an article about bird subspecies of interest in Colorado.  In it, among many other useful nuggets of information, they discuss ranges for the two subspecies of Sandhill Cranes.  They describe the Greaters as mostly migrating in the mountains and west while the Lessers move fairly quickly over the eastern plains.  When in Custer County (mountains) I see cranes in the fall moving generally west/southwest, probably toward the Greater Sandhill Crane staging area in the San Luis Valley.  (A lone exception was a group of four irresolutely flying north early last week.)  When in Pueblo County (just east of Custer), which is comprised of both mountains and plains, this fall the flocks of cranes I’ve seen recently have been flying fairly high in formation and due south.  I wonder what the chances are that these cranes might be Lessers.  Is direction of flight of multiple flocks along the eastern edge of the southern Front Range reliable for identifying these two subspecies?

Leon Bright, Pueblo