• 

  Profile

• 

  In flight

Cranes & Waders

White-naped Crane

Antigone vipio

• rare
• 50 km/h
• Vulnerable

Fewer than 8,000 left. Mates for life and dances to keep the bond. That long white nape stripe is unmistakable.

Population

Roughly 6,250-6,750 birds total (~3,700-4,500 mature individuals per the 2018 IUCN/BirdLife assessment), decreasing; other sources give higher figures (Smithsonian ~4,900-5,300; International Crane Foundation >11,000), likely reflecting different count years/methods

Habitat

Breeds in grassy marshes, wet sedge meadows, and reedbeds in broad river valleys and lake depressions within steppe and forest-steppe zones; winters on freshwater lakes, farmland, and occasionally coastal flats.

Fun fact

White-naped Cranes forage by digging deep for buried tubers and roots, a strategy that lets them share wintering wetlands with Red-crowned Cranes, which instead pick food from the surface.

Range

Breeds in northeastern Mongolia, northeastern China, and adjacent southeastern Russia (Dauria, Amur/Ussuri basins, Songnen/Sanjiang plains); winters mainly along the middle-lower Yangtze River (e.g. Poyang Lake) in China, the Korean DMZ, and southern Kyushu, Japan, with vagrants recorded in Taiwan and Kazakhstan.

Diet

Omnivorous. During the breeding season eats wetland plants, tubers, roots, and seeds (often dug from deep in the substrate); in winter and migration shifts to rice, waste grain, and cereal crops, supplemented with insects and small vertebrates such as amphibians and rodents.

Size

1.2 m

Wingspan

2.05 m

Lifespan

20 years