Cranes start to gather at summer resting sites, German-wide simultaneous crane counts during autumn migration 2017 started

Most of the cranes of the breeding population in Germany already finished their breeding season. Parallel to the harvest of cereals, they now start to gather at special summer resting sites. Not only oversummering non-breeders, but also successful breeding pairs with their offspring as well as unsuccessfull pairs come to these gathering sites.

This gathering of cranes in summer was also the starting point of the annual monitoring of resting cranes during autumn migration. At 9 fixed dates between mid-August and mid-December 2017 cranes are counted at more than 200 roost sites throughout Germany. The count date in August will be used to count birds of the breeding population in Germany.

For some places we are still looking for diligent crane counters. More information you will find here.