I used to work with sandhill cranes a lot when I was in Utah, but they were too large to consider carving a full lifesize bird. I decided that carving the head and some of the neck of a calling sandhill would be a suitable challenge. I developed the pattern for this bird from some photos I took of a crane brought in to a check station that I was staffing.

The head is carved from a piece of basswood, with all the feather detail burned in. I modified the tip on a soldering iron to burn in the papillae on the red portion of the head. Painting was done with acrylics. The base is laminated from two pieces of walnut.