The Sandhill Cranes spend the daylight hours foraging for food in the cornfields, soybeans fields, and pastures of  the farmland that adjoins the Platte River.  They may fly out several miles to find fields that still provide a food supply that will fatten them up for the next leg of their journey north. The cranes nest on the prairies of the Dakotas, Minnesota, Wisconsin, and Canada. Their nesting range is expanding and they even now nest in S.E. Minnesota.