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Crown Crane
The elegant Grey crowned crane is one of Africa’s most majestic and beautiful birds. It is the national symbol and the national bird of Uganda. The name is due to its yellow crown of feathers, tipped black. This crane moves gracefully in a most stately manner with a very dignified gait. In flight it is beautiful, using slow down strokes followed by quick upward strokes of its wings.

General Information:


Common Name:Crown crane
Scientific Name:Balearica regulorum
Kingdom: Animalia
Phylum: Chordata
Class: Aves
Order:Gruiformes
Family:Grudae

Description
The elegant Grey crowned crane is one of Africa’s most majestic and beautiful birds. It is the national symbol and the national bird of Uganda. The name is due to its yellow crown of feathers, tipped black. This crane moves gracefully in a most stately manner with a very dignified gait. In flight it is beautiful, using slow down strokes followed by quick upward strokes of its wings.

Distribution
The Grey crowned crane lives in eastern and southern Africa, from Kenya and Uganda to South Africa and Zimbabwe.

Habitat
Inhabit frequently in wetlands, savannahs, open grasslands, and cultivated areas. It occurs in modified habitats like pastures, croplands, and other irrigated areas, while in South Africa, it is found in marshes, grasslands, savannahs, and cultivated fields.

Mating Habits
Grey crowned cranes are monogamous and mate for life. During the breeding season, these birds perform beautiful displays: dancing, bowing, running, and jumping while making low booming calls that inflate their gular sacs. The calls are made while their head is lowered to shoulder level. Varying with the rains, the breeding season generally peaks from December to February. The female lays 1-4 eggs and both parents incubate them for about 50-60 days. Chicks are precocial, can run as soon as they hatch, and fledge in 56-100 days. Once they are fully grown and independent, chicks of different sexes will separate from their parents to start their own family. They reach reproductive maturity at about 3 years of age.

Diet
Grey crowned cranes are omnivores. They eat plant matter, including fresh parts of grasses, seed heads of sedges, and insects such as grasshoppers, locusts and crickets, and worms, lizards, frogs, and crabs.

Threats
  1. Populations of Grey crowned cranes are rapidly declining, due to degradation of habitat by human development, changes because of drought in several regions, the loss of breeding areas from overgrazing and the drainage of wetlands, and also the pet trade, egg collecting, use of pesticides and hunting.
  2. Pesticides also kill insects that these birds may otherwise eat.


IUCN Status
Endangered