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Common crane | Grus grus
Kraanvogel | Grulla común
The trumpeting of migrating cranes overhead carries far in autumn. After centuries of absence the species has recently returned to the Netherlands as a breeding bird.
Voice
A far-carrying, metallic trumpeting, krooh-krooh, audible for kilometres and usually heard well before the birds are seen. Pairs duet on the breeding grounds. Over the Netherlands mostly in October and November, and again in February and March.
Recording: Pálos Lőrinc — CC BY-SA 4.0 · Wikimedia Commons
Identification
Very large, long-legged bird, slate grey with a black-and-white head and neck pattern and a bare red crown patch. The drooping tertials form a distinctive black bustle over the tail. Flies with neck and legs extended on powerful, unhurried beats; juveniles have a brownish head and neck and no red crown.
Confusion species
Grey heron flies with the neck folded and with much slower beats; great egret is white. Distant flocks recall geese or swans, but cranes show longer, thinner necks, trailing legs and a deep trumpeting quite unlike the higher cackling of geese.
Habitat
Breeds in inaccessible wet ground: raised bog, swamp woodland and overgrown fen. Outside the breeding season on stubble, maize fields, Spanish dehesa and rice fields, roosting in shallow water or on sandbanks safe from ground predators.
Where the bird is most at home, classified with EUNIS — the European standard for habitats.
Range and movements
Breeds from Scandinavia and Germany east into Russia, with a small but growing Dutch population in the Peel and the Fochteloërveen, though birds passing over the Netherlands mostly belong to the eastern route. The western flyway runs through Germany and France to Extremadura, La Serena, Gallocanta and the Guadalquivir marismas, the continent's main wintering areas, where cranes winter in the dehesa among the holm oaks.
- Resident
- Breeding (summer)
- Winter
- Passage
- dark = core range, pale = thinly spread
How and when to look
In the Netherlands look up on clear, cold days in November and late February with an easterly wind — and listen first. In Spain, be at Gallocanta or in an Extremaduran dehesa at dawn in late December, when the flocks leave the roost for the acorn fields.
Conservation status
Protection of breeding mires and of staging areas along the flyway has allowed European numbers to rise and the range to spread west. Drainage of peatlands, disturbance at roosts and collisions with power lines remain the main risks.
Scientific name
Grus grus | (Linnaeus, 1758)
Linnaeus described the species in 1758 as Ardea grus; because it was later moved to another genus, the author and year stand in brackets. The genus Grus was introduced in 1760 by Brisson. Grus is the Latin word for 'crane'. The specific name repeats the genus name. The specimen the first description was based on came from Sweden.