The common name of this bird refers to their habitat such as the Platte River, on the edge of Nebraska's Sandhills on the American Great Plains.

The central Platte River valley in Nebraska is the most important stopover area for the nominotypical subspecies, the lesser sandhill crane (A. c. canadensis), with up to 450,000 of these birds migrating through annually.

[3][4] In 1750, English naturalist George Edwards included an illustration and a description of the sandhill crane in the third volume of his A Natural History of Uncommon Birds.

Edwards based his hand-coloured etching on a preserved specimen that had been brought to London from the Hudson Bay area of Canada by James Isham.

[7] In the resulting rearrangement to create monophyletic genera, four species, including the sandhill crane, were placed in the resurrected genus Antigone that had originally been erected by the German naturalist Ludwig Reichenbach in 1853.

[19] These cranes frequently give a loud, trumpeting call that suggests a rolled "r" in the throat, and they can be heard from a long distance.

[17] Using thermals to obtain lift, they can stay aloft for many hours, requiring only occasional flapping of their wings, thus expending little energy.

Migratory flocks contain hundreds of birds, and can create clear outlines of the normally invisible rising columns of air (thermals) they ride.

One place this happens is at Bosque del Apache National Wildlife Refuge, 100 miles (160 km) south of Albuquerque, New Mexico.

[27] Sandhill cranes occur in pastures, open prairies and freshwater wetlands in peninsular Florida from the Everglades to the Okefenokee Swamp.

The lesser and greater sandhill cranes are quite distinct, their divergence dating to roughly 2.3–1.2 million years ago , some time during the Late Pliocene or Early Pleistocene.

Glaciation seemingly fragmented off a founder population of lesser sandhill cranes, because during each major ice age, its present breeding range was frozen year-round.

[25] Conceivably, they might be considered distinct species already, a monotypic G. canadensis and the greater sandhill crane, G. pratensis, which would include the other populations.

They and the migratory greater sandhill cranes proper may form a group of lineages that diverged much later from a range in the southern U.S. and maybe northern Mexico, where they were resident.

They often feed with their bills down to the ground as they root around for seeds and other foods, in shallow wetlands with vegetation or various upland habitats.

Corvids, such as ravens and crows, gulls, jaegers, raptors and mammals such as foxes, coyotes and racoons feed on young cranes and eggs.

[30] In Oregon and California, the most serious predators of chicks are reportedly coyotes, ravens, raccoons, American mink, and great horned owls, roughly in descending order.

[33][34][35] Additionally, there is a report that even a much smaller peregrine falcon has successfully killed a 3.1 kg (6.8 lb) adult sandhill crane in a stoop.

Actively brooding adults are more likely to react aggressively to potential predators to defend their chicks than wintering birds, which most often normally try to evade attacks on foot or in flight.

[37] For land predators such as dogs, foxes, and coyotes, they move forward, often hissing, with their wings open and bills pointed.

[12] In the 1930s, sandhill cranes were generally extirpated east of the Mississippi River, but their populations have recovered, with an estimated 98,000 in the region in 2018, a substantial increase over the previous year.

Since the early 2000s, the sandhill crane has expanded both its winter (nonbreeding) and breeding ranges northward, including into upstate New York.

This breeding flock is divided between the Audubon Institute's Species Survival Center and White Oak Conservation in Yulee, Florida.

[48] A Mississippi sandhill crane was the first bird to hatch from an egg fertilized by sperm that was thawed from a cryogenic state.

In January 2019, 25 to 30 thousand cranes (both greater and lesser subspecies) were found wintering at the Whitewater Draw State Wildlife Area near McNeal in southeast Arizona.

The Cuban sandhill crane (subspecies A. c. nesiotes) is not as rare as once believed and while it remains threatened its population is increasing.

[49] Primary threats to Cuban sandhill cranes are habitat loss due to tree planting, spreading shrubs, expanding agriculture and fires, predation by non-native mammals (dogs, mongooses and feral pigs), and poaching.

[55] The mythical Mothman, a humanoid creature reportedly seen in the Point Pleasant, West Virginia area from November 1966 to December 1967 is thought to have originated from sightings of out-of-migration sandhill cranes.

[56][57] In 2023 the "Mississippi sandhill crane" was featured on a United States Postal Service Forever stamp as part of the Endangered Species set, based on a photograph from Joel Sartore's Photo Ark.