Observation 7420

This count takes place at the NIPSCO power plant. Right before the active count time a coal train ran between me and the crane pond & blocked my view. I suspect many cranes left the pond then and flew to the north where I can't see them. The 347 cranes I counted were all higher in the sky & moving mostly from the SE toward the power plant fields. Normally in other years they have lifted off the south pond and flown out to fields to the SW. Also my last 98 cranes were within the 12 minutes after I should have stopped counting. Since the sky was still active, I kept counting. Within the official 60 minutes (30+30) around sunrise I only had 249 cranes.