Alabama refuge is a paradise for birders and thousands of migrating sandhill cranes

Flooded cornfields near the Tennessee River in northern Alabama are a paradise for birders who flock to see tens of thousands of migrating sandhill cranes every winter. The tall-standing cranes with distinctive red foreheads and gray feathers crowd together and trumpet their caws among broken corn stalks and shallow waters at the Wheeler National Wildlife Refuge Center. They fly to Alabama from the Great Lakes annually along with a much smaller number of the rare endangered whooping cranes. Last year, the sandhill population that wintered at Wheeler reached a new record of 30,000 cranes.