Grus leucogeranus

The Siberian Crane is a large wading bird. Although it is divided into three populations, namely the eastern, central and western populations, it is a monotypic species with no subspecies differentiation. Known as the "living fossil" of birds, there are less than 4,000 of them in the world. Every year, 98% of the world's Siberian Cranes go to Poyang Lake for wintering.

On September 28, 2019, the 15th meeting of the Standing Committee of the 13th People's Congress of Jiangxi Province voted to pass the "Decision of the Standing Committee of the People's Congress of Jiangxi Province on Determining the White Crane as the "Provincial Bird" of Jiangxi Province", which means that the White Crane has been officially determined as the "Provincial Bird" of Jiangxi Province.

The white crane is a migratory bird, and it migrates in large groups in autumn and spring. The migration process consumes a lot of energy, and may encounter bad weather, the wrong direction of migration, and adapt to unfamiliar new environments. After the wind and rain, there are always white cranes injured, especially immature white cranes. It takes 85 days for a newly born white crane to be able to fly. During this period, if the little crane is injured and cannot fly, it cannot participate in the large migration, which means it cannot survive the cold winter.

White cranes often move alone, in pairs, and in family groups. During the migration season and winter festivals, they often gather in large groups of dozens or even hundreds of them, especially in large groups at the resting stations and wintering grounds during the migration. They forage in shallow water near waters rich in plants, and each feeding time is kept at about 20 minutes. When feeding, they often immerse their mouths and heads in the water, and slowly walk while feeding. They look up and look around from time to time. They are timid and alert, and take off immediately at the slightest movement. They fly in a "one" or "human" formation.

The white crane mainly feeds on the stems and tubers of plants such as Vallisneria, Potamogeton, Moss, and Water Chestnut. It also eats leaves and young shoots of aquatic plants and a small amount of animal food such as clams, snails, mollusks, insects, and crustaceans.

The white crane is omnivorous in its breeding grounds, including plant roots, underground stems, buds, seeds, berries, as well as insects, fish, frogs, and rodents. When plant food is difficult to obtain due to snow cover, they mainly feed on animals such as lemmings and rats; when the temperature is below 0℃ in mid-May, white cranes mainly eat cranberries. When the wetlands thaw, they eat reed tubers, dragonfly larvae and small fish; in the nesting season, they mainly eat plants, including the roots of Veratrum, the seeds of Crowberry, the buds of Horsetail and the roots and stems of Flower Rush. During their migration to the south, white cranes forage for tender roots of plants such as Ophiopogon japonicus, Alisma orientalis, and Tripterygium wilfordii, as well as frogs and small fish in the tundra swamps of the Greater Khingan Range forest area in Inner Mongolia. In the wintering area of Poyang Lake, they mainly dig up the underground stems and roots of aquatic plants such as Vallisneria ovata, Potamogeton truncatum, Water Chestnut and Polygonum aviculare in the underwater mud, accounting for more than 90% of their total food intake. They also eat a small amount of clam meat, small fish, small snails and gravel.

The white crane is a monogamous bird. It arrives at the nesting site in late May when the tundra is still covered with ice and snow. The nest is built on the shore of an open swamp or on a grassy mound with a water depth of 20-60 cm. The nest is simple and made mainly of dead grass. The nest is flat and slightly concave in the center, 12-15 cm above the water surface. The distance between nests is 10-20 kilometers, sometimes only 2-3 kilometers. The egg-laying period often coincides with the melting of ice and snow, from late May to mid-June. Each nest lays two eggs. The eggs are dark olive in color, with dark brown spots of varying sizes on the blunt end. Male and female cranes incubate the eggs alternately, but female cranes are the main ones. The incubation period is about 27 days, and the hatching rate is only 1/3. Most young cranes hatch in the last five days of June and the first five days of July, but only one young crane can survive to fly, because the young cranes of white cranes are too aggressive, and the weaker one often dies before growing flight feathers. They grow flight feathers at 70-75 days old and can fly at 90 days old.

The white crane occupies a place in Chinese culture, symbolizing auspiciousness and longevity. The white body embodies the pure elegance of the white crane, and also represents good luck. The villagers of Sanzao, Zhuhai, Guangdong, dance lions and cranes from the first day of the Lunar New Year to the seventh day of the first lunar month every year. On New Year's Eve, the newly tied white cranes are dressed in red and decorated with flowers, and the elders with high moral character and virtue open the eyes of the white cranes to show their spiritual power (use a new brush to dot the eyes with cinnabar). The crane dance imitates the white crane: combing feathers, looking for food, drinking water, flying, resting, squatting on the side to listen to the crane song and other movements. The crane song is an important part of the crane dance. It is composed and sung by oneself, with four sentences in a group, and the length is not limited. If you don't want to continue singing, according to convention, the singer only needs to sing one sentence "fly up to the sky with all feathers", and the crane song will end. The lyrics praise social development, good people and good deeds, persuade people to be kind, and teach people to make progress, which has the function of educating and entertaining.

The International Crane Foundation and Beijing Zoo conducted artificial insemination on female cranes in 1981 and 1989, respectively, and the cranes were successfully bred through artificial incubation. In 2000, Hefei Wildlife Park allowed a pair of white cranes to choose their own mates and mate in captivity, and they successfully bred naturally. Subsequently, they bred successfully again in 2001 and 2002. The disturbances in the breeding grounds are relatively small, and they are mainly threatened by oil extraction and deforestation. When the parent cranes are not near the nest, the eggs are often eaten by skuas, arctic gulls and herring gulls. In the assembly areas, migration stopover areas and wintering areas, the main environmental pressures are the loss and destruction of wetlands and biological resources such as fish and reeds due to population growth and rapid economic development, as well as human disturbances such as grazing and fishing with illegal fishing gear. The operation of the Three Gorges Project may reduce the water surface of the wetlands in the middle and lower reaches of the Yangtze River, which will have an adverse impact on the white cranes and other cranes that winter there.

The white crane is one of the endangered animals, which is caused by many factors. Among the reasons for the extinction of birds, habitat destruction and change account for 60%, human hunting accounts for 29%, followed by competition from introduced populations, low survival rate of their own reproduction, and international environmental pollution. Human destruction of the environment and hunting are the main reasons.

Listed in the "IUCN Red List of Endangered Species" (IUCN) 2018 ver 3.1-Critically Endangered (CR).

Listed in Appendix I, Appendix II and Appendix III of the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES) 2019 Edition Appendix I.

Listed in China's "National Key Protected Wildlife List" (January 14, 1989) Level 1.

Listed in China's Red Book of Endangered Animals Level: Endangered Effective Year: 1996.

Listed in China's "National Key Protected Wildlife List" (February 5, 2021) Level 1.

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Distributed in Azerbaijan, China, Islamic Republic of Iran, Kazakhstan, Mongolia and Uzbekistan.
Possibly extinct: Afghanistan, India, Pakistan, Turkmenistan.
Migrant bird: Hong Kong, Japan, Jordan, South Korea.
In China, it is mainly distributed from the northeast to the middle and lower reaches of the Yangtze River. During migration, it is seen in Hebei (Luanhekou, Beidaihe), Inner Mongolia (Chifeng, Dalai Lake, Xing'an League, Jirim League), Liaoning (Shuangtaikou, Dalian), Jilin (Momoge, Xianghai), Heilongjiang (Zhalong, Lindian), Anhui (Wuchang Lake, Shengjin Lake, Laizi Lake), Shandong (Yellow River Delta), Henan (Yellow River Ancient Course, Heigangkou), etc. The wintering grounds are mainly in Jiangxi (Poyang Lake) and Hunan (Dongting Lake). During the wintering period, sporadic individuals are seen in Wafangdian, Liaoning, Yancheng and Dongtai, Jiangsu, Yuyao, Zhejiang, the coastal areas of Qingdao, Shandong, and Huocheng, Xinjiang. There are three separate popul

The head and face of the White Crane are naked and bright red. The body feathers are white, the primary flight feathers are black, the secondary flight feathers and third flight feathers are white. The third flight feathers extend into a sickle shape and cover the tail, covering the black primary flight feathers. The feathers are white when standing, and only the black primary flight feathers are visible when flying. The head of the young bird is feathered, the upper body is auburn, the underparts and flanks are white with russet; the shoulders are slate gray, the base is light, and the feathers are reddish brown; the lower back, waist and tail coverts are bright russet with white edges; the center The tail feathers are slate gray, with russet tips and white bases; the primary flight feathers are black. The iris is brown, and the mouth and feet are dark red. The feet of the 2nd instar turn red, and the mouth of the 3rd instar also turns red.
Size measurement: weight ♂5100-7400g, ♀49