Caucasian Common Crane (Grus grus archibaldi)

Worldwide there are just about 90-95 pairs of this extremly rare subspecies of the Common Crane. Within a cooperation between Crane Conservation Germany and the University in Georgia, Tbilisi

(INSTITUTE OF ZOOLOGY OF THE ILIA STATE UNIVERSITY) the last known 13 crane pairs were visited from 6th - 12th of July 2018 by an international team with members from Armenia, Germany, Georgia, France, Russia und Turkey. 12 pairs could be confirmed, but one pair was absent as the wetland was dried out. In total nine juveniles of five pairs were marked with GPS-tags to study their habitat use.

We thank the Max-Planck Institute for Ornithology in Radolfzell - in particular Prof. Martin Wikleski, Dr. Wolfgang Fiedler and Bernd Vorneweg for these GPS-tags!

The picture shows the releasing of one marked juvenile in Georgia (photo by Dr. Günter Nowald, 10th July 2018)