Red-crowned crane
Grus japonensis
— Where the name comes from
Grus is Latin for crane, a word that imitates the call, like the Greek géranos and the English crane. Japonensis means “of Japan”, where the species is revered. In Japanese it is tanchōzuru, “red-crowned crane”: the patch on its head is not feathers but bare skin, and it flushes brighter when the bird is excited.
— Facts
- Group
- Birds · Aves
- Order
- Cranes and allies
- Habitat
- Marshes, wet grassland, riverbanks
- Range
- North-eastern China, the Russian Far East, Korea; a resident population in Hokkaido
- Size
- 150–158 cm, wingspan 220–250 cm, 7–10 kg
- Diet
- Fish, amphibians, insects, crabs, shoots and seeds
- Lifespan
- Over 30 years
— Characteristics
- 01
It is one of the heaviest cranes in the world.
- 02
Pairs stay together for life and sing in duet.
- 03
In winter pairs dance on the snow, leaping and bowing.
— What sets it apart
In East Asia it is the symbol of longevity and fidelity, and in Japan of a hope. It is said that whoever folds a thousand paper cranes will have a wish granted, and Sadako Sasaki, a girl stricken with leukaemia after the Hiroshima bomb, began folding them in 1955: since then paper cranes have become a symbol of peace. The real bird in Hokkaido had almost vanished: in the 1920s about twenty were left, and it was the local people who saved it, carrying maize into the frozen marshes through the winters. Today there are more than a thousand.
