Endangered
Grey Crowned Crane
Balearica regulorum
The grey crowned crane or gray crowned crane is a large crane species native to Sub-Saharan Africa.
Appearance
The grey crowned crane is approximately 1 m (3 ft 3 in) tall, weighs 3.5 kg (7.7 lb), and has a wingspan of 2 m (6 ft 7 in). Its body plumage is mainly grey. The wings are predominantly white, dark grey and dark red with a golden yellow patch.
Published measurements include mass about 152.
Range and habitat
The grey crowned crane occurs in dry savannah in Sub-Saharan Africa, although it nests in somewhat wetter habitats. The grey crowned crane or gray crowned crane is a large crane species native to Sub-Saharan Africa. It occurs mainly in dry savannah, although it nests in somewhat wetter habitats, and can also be found in marshes, cultivated lands and grassy flatlands near rivers and lakes.
Pins are Wikidata “endemic to” fields. Orange dots, when present, are GBIF occurrence tiles — survey bias included.
Diet and breeding
The grey crowned crane has a breeding display involving dancing, bowing, and jumping. Dancing is an integral part of courtship, but also may be done at any time of the year.
The birds also associate with grazing herbivores, benefiting from the ability to grab prey items disturbed by antelopes and gazelles. Grey crowned cranes time their breeding season around the rains, although the effect varies geographically. In East Africa the species breeds year-round, but most frequently during the drier periods, whereas in Southern Africa the breeding season is timed to coincide with the rains.
In crisis
It is listed as endangered on the IUCN Red List. Although the grey crowned crane remains common over some of its range, it faces threats to its habitat due to drainage, overgrazing, and pesticide pollution. Their global population is estimated to be between 58,000 and 77,000 individuals.
In 2012 it was uplisted from vulnerable to endangered by the IUCN.
CITES lists this taxon on Appendix II. Confirm the current appendix on the CITES checklist.
Grey Crowned Crane is Endangered on this catalog because that is the IUCN category stored on Wikidata. Confirm the official criteria and any later count on iucnredlist.org.
Sources
Written for this catalog from the English Wikipedia article on Grey Crowned Crane, Wikidata item Q335992. Family and order context is original field-guide writing about the group, not a copied assessment of this one species. Wikipedia text is CC BY-SA. Not an IUCN assessment. Counts, when quoted, can change — confirm them on the recovery programme and on iucnredlist.org.
