It was in early November 2002 that we drove on a rough mountain track from Guiyang to Caohai Nature Reserve on the Yunnan-Guizhou Plateau.
As a local saying has it: "In Guizhou it rains almost every day, and there are barren hills and turbulent rivers everywhere." But thanks to the rain, winter in this sparsely populated region is usually a little warmer than in the north of China, making Guizhou an overwintering paradise for the black-necked crane (Grus nigricollis), also known as the Tibetan crane.
In Chinese, caohai means "grass sea," and this is one of the world's largest areas of freshwater lakes, located 2,170 meters above sea level at 26.6°N and 104.2°E. With its vast reed beds and grassy marshes, and waters teeming with fish and crabs, it is a magnet for untold thousands of birds, both resident, migratory and overwintering.
But when Caohai's luxuriant green vegetation starts to yellow, the local Yi people know to expect the arrival of black-necked cranes from their breeding grounds on the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau. Indeed, these people regard the cranes as being auspicious, and as we traveled around we saw many beautiful clay sculptures and frescoes of them in small Yi temples, with joss sticks and candles burning. Many of these people would lean on their old wooden door frames and await lines of migrating cranes appearing in the sky. One of those old peasants told us that a Yi proverb (based on the lunar calendar) goes: "The cranes come after Sept. 9, and leave before March 3."
When they are migrating, the cranes travel in family groups gathered into larger flocks of dozens or more. Upon arrival, they were timid, but clever, and did not land until they were sure everything was safe after wheeling in the sky for long time.
Led by Xiong Zheng-Guo, the reserve's director, we rowed a boat stealthily into the lake, then hid among reeds to watch a group of about 30 large birds 80 meters away. Some were walking slowly round, some had their heads buried in their wing feathers as they stood on one leg resting, while a few seemed to be on lookout in the cold early morning.
They were graceful and beautiful, the adults standing about 1.5 meters with gray-white body plumage, long black necks, legs and bills -- except for their yellow bill tips -- and with black tails, flight feathers and heads, except for a vermilion crown and a patch of white feathers below and behind their eyes.
Sonorous cries
Then, getting restless, the large birds became frightened and, after running for several strides they rose into the sky on their great flapping wings, with their long legs straight out behind them.
At other times, we often heard the cry "ga-ga-ga" as they sang in the marshes. With their well-developed tracheas, like a long and bent wind instrument, their loud and sonorous cries can be heard clearly up to 2.5 km away, rising above the calls of the reserve's 75 other species of birds -- ducks, gulls, storks and cranes.
Although mainly vegetarian, these cranes are omnivorous, and also feed on small fish, amphibians and insects. On a nearby hillside, we even came across several of them among sheep, pigs and cattle feeding in the fields on the vegetables, grains and root crops -- from cabbages to buckwheat, potatoes and radishes -- left behind after the harvest.
One of 15 species of cranes in the world, the black-necked was the last to be discovered, by the Russian explorer N.M. Przevalski at Qinghai Lake in 1876. Endemic to China, it is the only crane exclusively living on plateau wetlands, with its narrow habitat encompassing summer breeding grounds at 3,900-4,300 meters on the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau, and overwintering sites in marshes at around 1,300-2,500 meters on the Yunnan-Guizhou Plateau, in Tibet and western Sichuan.
Living as they do in such harsh and changeable conditions, with frequent food shortages on the cold, snowy plateaux, the survival rate of black-necked cranes is low, making the birds rare indeed.
Habitat protection
In fact, at the International Crane Protection Meeting in India in 1983, it was reported that there were only about 200 left in the world. However, improved protection of their habitats in the past 20 years has seen their numbers rise to an estimated 7,000, according to data given to the International Crane Workshop in Beijing last year.
Despite this welcome increase in their numbers, however, the threat of extinction still hangs over black-necked cranes, which, even today, are still disturbed and sometimes killed by peasants intent on preserving seeds they have sown in spring. In addition, the birds are also threatened by the encroachment of desert into the wetlands where they live, as well as by local people's continued cutting of peat for fuel, which damages the wetland ecology.
Human expansion, too, has steadily pushed the birds higher into the mountain plateaux, narrowing their habitat to areas of poorer food sources. So it is that, though in the 1950s some could be found in India and Vietnam, and many lived at lower altitudes in Yunnan and Guizhou provinces, these populations are now gone.
Perhaps today's best hope for black-necked cranes are the 15 reserves set up primarily for them in China -- along with the efforts of numerous volunteer groups working to educate city and village dwellers about the need to protect the birds. Consequently, in the past 10 years there have typically been 320-490 individuals staying in Caohai every winter -- and already by the time we got there last November, 360 had arrived.
Now volunteers in many areas put out food when the ground is covered in snow. We look forward to many more people showing such loving care for these magnificent black-necked cranes.
