Tags
Birds in Poitou-Charentes, Crane migration in Poitou-Charentes, Cranes, Cranes in Mongolia, Eurasian Cranes, Grus grus, Poitou Charentes
Cranes will be passing overhead now (Feb/March), en route for breeding grounds in Northern Europe. They have set migration routes and one passes up through western France and over the Poitou-Charentes region.
The Eurasian Crane (Grus grus) is one of the most abundant of the fifteen crane species in the world with a total world population of around 400,000 birds. Their breeding range is a wide band that stretches from North West Europe east through Russia, over the Ural mountains, through Mongolia, northern China and ends in eastern Siberia.
So guess where I took this photo…… clue it was not Poitou-Charentes.
Family groups and non-breeding birds begin to migrate south in July, but the majority of the species migrate in early September, arriving in African wintering grounds during October. The species returns to its breeding areas in March, where breeding begins in late April or early May.
You do see cranes flying over the Poitou-Charentes region as well as storks, so be carefull in your identification. The cranes are usually in large groups of 10/20 or more and Cranes are very vocal whereas Storks rarely make any noise.,
During the winter there will be thousands of Cranes in France, as they are increasingly wintering north of the Pyrenees, rather than in Spain and Africa, and at a wider range of sites. This is probably yet another effect of climate change, soon Brits will be overwintering in Calais? The results for the populations of Cranes in the 2010/2011 season has recently been produced, and indicates that once again previous records have been beaten, with around 110,000 birds counted from all sites combined, in January 2011. The comparable figure for the previous winter was 103,000, itself a new record at the time.
All the photos here were taken in Mongolia??? Because I do not have any taken in France.
Ah – I wondered what the yurt was doing there! Cranes pass overhead here, too, on their way to and from their breeding grounds. They make an incredible noise and it’s a wonderful sight.
Yes it was a photo I took a few years back when we did Moscow to Bejing on the trans Siberian and stopped of at various points along the way. Incidentally the Mongolians prefer the name Ger to Yurt as Yurt is Russian and they have had bits of trouble from their big brother neighbours in the past.
Lovely- I grew up in Nebraska (US) at the point of the largest Sandhill Crane migration in North America- spent many hours watching them.
Yes its amazing to think that they have been following the same routes for hundreds and probably thousands of years.
I’ve noticed them. . . mostly at night, when the sky is full of stars and one only hears them passing overhead. I thought it was a bit early but I’ve not kept track of their migratory time schedule. Nice post
Here’s hoping you’ll be lucky enough to photograph this year’s migration in Poitou! I shall look out for them in Manche. We did have a group of storks one year, grazing on the pasture across the river Soulles from our house. Apparently there is a colony about 40 km from here and these must have got lost!
I think I will miss it this Spring, (if you can call it Spring) I am a bit tied up in GB at the moment but should soon be back and might catch them returning south in the Autumn.
Lovely, they have passed over us in St Remy sur Creuse this afternoon! What a distinctive noise, and also noticed my first Peacock butterfly today.
Had a few hundred Common Cranes in Spain near Zaragosa late February. There had been a Sandhill Crane a few days earlier, presumably the bird seen in the UK in autumn 2011.
More and more people seem to be getting interested in the cranes, I have had lots of people telling me about large numbers migrating over their area. I went to see if I could get some photos at Lakenheath Fen in East Anglia but on the day I went they were not showing, ‘Plenty of good views yesterday, Sir’