Dog Day Afternoons.

[Flutterby]

The lechwe are very pretty as are the cranes....great sightings.

[Richprins]

Interesting...they look a bit ugly to me, those birds?

[nan]

love the Cranes

[Puff Addy]

love the Cranes

Me, too!

[Dewi]

Thanks Lis, Flutt's, RP, Nan & Puff Addy.

Ugly??? RP, you need a big dose of aesthetics pumped into your system. Either that, or a trip to Specsavers.

Now read very carefully in the next bit. You might learn something teach.

[Dewi]

The displaying continued, with only the one bird at first, followed after a while by the other two. As this seemed to be a half hearted attempt at display, I came to the conclusion that these were three batchelor males practicing for the coming breeding season? If anyone can shed light on this from these photos, I'd love to know what was going on.

The hop.







The other two join in.











As mentioned earlier, Wattled Cranes are listed as vulnerable. The World population is estimated to be as low as 5,000 to 8,000 birds and the trend appears to be worsening.

As we watched the display above, my excitement levels rose. Just seeing this species was high on my wish list, but to see them perform like this was the icing on the cake. J had warned Ruel that I was rather excitable when watching new species, but I think he only really understood what J had meant at this point.

As a matter of interest, the name "Crane" derives from the Welsh word garan, which can translate as crane, stork, love and shank. It is used as a man's name (as in Garan Evans, former WRU player) and also in common use as a pet name for a baby, usually a girl, such as "Oh, fy ngharan bach." Which translates to "Oh, my little love."

[nan]

I also saw Blue Cranes do a sort of ballet

will be interesting to know

[Dewi]

That must have been special Nan. All cranes do a similar display. I just wish I knew who was displaying here and to whom?

[Lisbeth]

Must have been a great show

[Alf]

It's always interesting to see the behavior of different animals, especially at breeding time