Wattled Crane Nest Monitoring in Kwazulu-Natal by Tanya Smith of EWT
Much of my time has been spent trying to monitor the 70 known Critically Endangered Wattled Crane breeding pairs in the KwaZulu-Natal province.
Drakensberg Crane Conservation Project
Tanya Smith
Regional Coordinator
Wattled Crane Nest Monitoring in Kwazulu-Natal
Much of my time has been spent trying to monitor the 70 known Critically Endangered Wattled Crane breeding pairs in the KwaZulu-Natal province. Thanks to a flight sponsored by The Bateleurs and some long and often ‘wet’ hours on the ground, I have managed to check over 40 of these pairs thus far. We conducted an aerial survey, proudly sponsored by The Bateleurs, on June 4th where we focused our efforts in the southern regions of KwaZulu-Natal. On the day we had perfect survey weather and were able to visit all 20 Wattled Crane breeding sites with no disruption. We started just north of Himeville and made our way south until we checked the most southern pairs in the province around Kokstad and Cedarville. We were fortunate enough to locate 12 of the 20 pairs on the day and of the 12 pairs, five of those were found to be breeding. Of those five, three nests had two egg clutches. These nests were located on the ground just over a week later and unfortunately all three of these nests had failed, possibly due to a significant cold front that passed over the country shortly after the aerial survey. Thanks must go to The Bateleurs and to our pilot Johan Meiring for a great and successful flight.
As I mentioned earlier, I have managed to check approximately 40 Wattled Crane breeding pairs at least once thus far and to date 19 pairs have or are breeding, 9 pairs couldn’t be located whilst the remaining 12 pairs weren’t breeding at the time of the visit. However we are in the process of completing the main Ezemvelo KZN Wildlife aerial survey and the above breeding status of the provinces Wattled Crane breeding population will undoubtedly be different. Myself and members of KZN Wildlife managed to successfully collect the first abandoned Wattled Crane ‘second egg’ of the season recently. This egg was successfully hatched and the chick was flown to Johannesburg Zoo where it is doing very well. Also the chick that hatched in the wild from the nest where we collected the egg is doing well and is regularly seen with the adult pair. We have two other nests at the moment with two egg clutches that I have visited and completed the measurements for and both these sites are due for collection in mid August.
We have had some really interesting ring re-sightings these couple months, four of which were ringed birds seen in a pair. Of particular interest is that two of these birds seen in a pair were young birds of three and four years of age and this was the first time they were seen in a pair, with previous sightings of them being in a flock. These pairs haven’t shown signs of breeding this season but hopefully by next season they would have found a suitable breeding territory. The other two ringed birds seen were also part of a pair, with one bird being ringed 15 years ago and the other ringed eight years ago. The latter is a bird that was colour ringed in 2002 on a farm close to Nottingham Road and is currently breeding on a farm SW of Underberg, approximately 110 km’s as the ‘Crane’ flies from where it was raised to where it is breeding.
Lastly I’d like to thank PG Bison for continuing their co-sponsorship of the Drakensberg Crane Conservation Project and I look forward to a long successful partnership! Also a huge thanks must also go to Rand Merchant Bank for the consistent support for Crane conservation for more than 10 years, which has been integral in getting the project and crane conservation in South Africa to where it is today. Thank you to Lovemore Brothers for their donation towards the project for 2010 If it wasn’t for sponsors like Rand Merchant Bank , PG Bison and Lovemore Brothers we wouldn’t be able to come close to halting the decline of the countries three crane species, as we have been able to do. So THANK YOU!!!
