Neighborhood Mascots

As we are rushing out the door this morning to the bus stop, this is what we found on our front porch.

These are our neighborhood pets - sandhill cranes.  We hadn't seen them in months and thought maybe they had moved on to another nesting spot.  But as it turns out, they were nesting right here - with not one, but two babies!  I've blogged about this beautiful birds before.  I love that they mate for life and really watch out for each other.  In fact, one of the adult birds usually hangs back and keeps "watch" as the babies and the other adult get to eat (I'm sure it's the mom in the back taking care of business, but I can't quite tell)  The babies are born fuzzy brown and then gradually turn gray with red heads.  On occasion we feed them hamster food (seeds, etc).  They usually walk through the backyard, but for some reason they were at our front door this morning.  I ran Nate and Lauren to the bus and when Brooke and I came back, they were still there.  So we sat with them for a few minutes.