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Found in several scattered areas of North America, Sandhill Cranes reach their peak abundance at migratory stopover points on the Great Plains. The early spring gathering of Sandhills on the Platte River in Nebraska is among the greatest wildlife spectacles on the continent, with over a quarter of a million birds present at one time. Although they are currently very common, their dependence on key stopover sites makes them vulnerable to loss of habitat in the future.

One of the rarest North American birds, and also one of the largest and most magnificent. Once fairly widespread on the northern prairies, it was brought to the brink of extinction in the 1940s, but strict protection has brought the wild population back to well over one hundred. The flock that winters on the central Texas coast flies 2400 miles north to nest in Wood Buffalo National Park in central Canada; this remote breeding area was not discovered until 1954.

This crane is relatively common in parts of Eurasia, but strictly an accidental visitor to North America. Most records have been of birds in migrating flocks of Sandhill Cranes on the Great Plains; these are likely individuals that joined flocks of Sandhills in eastern Siberia, and then traveled with them back across the Bering Strait and south to wintering areas on this continent.