Festival Of The Cranes 2022

What is it?

The Festival of the Cranes is a free event that happens every year in mid January at Wheeler Wildlife Refuge in Decatur Alabama. It typically features numerous activities that include storytelling, photography workshops, music, children activities, and more! Note that the cranes start appearing a few weeks before the actual festival, so you can visit early and still see plenty of them! (I was out there the first week in January and there were hundreds upon hundreds of them!)

Thousands of Sandhill cranes and the endangered Whooping cranes, along with other wildlife make an appearance in the fields around the Visitor Center and Observation Building (Be sure and visit both side of Hwy 67!). The refuge is also home to hundreds of fish, reptiles and other creatures.

Where is it?

The Refuge is typically the best place for viewing the birds and is on the South side of Hwy 67 between Decatur and Hartselle. However it should be noted that they move all around both the North and South sides of Hwy 67 in the wetlands so you can see them from just about anywhere.

Best Crane Viewing Spots

Once you arrive and park at the visitor center there are typically 3 main areas shown below where you can find a multitude of cranes.

1. Looking to the West over the swamp and into the farmland

2. Looking more to the North and back towards the Hwy (note that there are blinds set up with peep holes that you can look through and photograph through)

3. Looking to the East in the main fields right in front.

Observation Building If you look on the map below and follow the trail between spots 1 and 2, there is a lookout building that is fully enclosed where you can sit and relax and watch as well.

What You Can Expect To See

On Friday Jan 14, 2022 I went out around 9 AM on my way to Huntsville. There were around 10 people there at the time, and by the time I left at 9:30 the parking lot was almost 1/2 full and there were considerably more folks around. I only photographed from location #1 as that was where most of the birds were. You can view what I photographed in the gallery below.

There are many other events that take place all around Decatur during this event. Unfortunately this year, I was actually a little under the weather plus we had rain and possible snow/ice moving in so I didn’t get a chance to make it out to the other events. You can see everything that is planned at the info link at the bottom of this page.

What Gear To Bring

Binoculars

While you can just use your eyeballs for viewing, things get a lot better if you’ve got a pair of binoculars. If you need a set, here are some high quality and reasonably priced recommendations (and deals as of the time of this writing)

Cameras

Pretty much any dedicated camera will work well for capturing the birds. I used a Nikon D7200 (see it here) for the ones in the gallery above. The main thing I would recommend is shooting in Aperture Priority with a starting ISO of 400 to help ensure you’re getting fast shutter speeds to freeze the motion of the birds. Ideally you’ll be looking at something like 1/1200-1/2000 shutter speeds.

Lenses

You’ll want to have as much reach as possible. For the shots you see on this site, I used a Nikon 500 5.6 (see it here). While I was there, I also talked with a guy using the Nikon 200-500 F5.6 and that was a nice looking lens as well and 1/2 the price ($1300) of the one I had. I also used a Nikon 2X Teleconverter to give me some extra reach.. When you add in the fact that the D7200 is a crop sensor camera with a 1.5x crop factor, combining all these things together gave me an effective field of view of 1500mm. (500 x 2 x 1.5).

Many folks will have something like the much more affordable Nikon 70-300 ($800) and that should be good for most purposes.

The Sigma 150-600mm lens is also popular and on sale right now for about $850.

Tripods/Monopods

There were several photographers there with tripods set up, but for me, I prefer being able to move quickly between locations and as I wasn’t staying very long, I didn’t need one. If you plan on shooting for a while, a tripod may be a good idea. Gimbal heads seem to be popular like the one below

Festival of the Cranes Details

Dates: 1/14/2022, 1/16/2022

• Website: Festival of the Cranes

• Address: 3121 Visitor Center Rd, Decatur, AL 35601

• Phone: (256) 350-2028