The Tibetan residents living in Pagri Town of Xigaze Prefecture, southern Tibet, which stands at 4,300 meters above sea level, surprisingly found that the black-necked cranes came to their town.
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Photo taken on December 11, 2008, shows a group of black-necked cranes in Lhasa, capital of southwest China's Tibet Autonomous Region.(Xinhua Photo) |
The black-necked cranes inhabited in Tibet used to fly to Nyalam County for hibernation, which is located on the north side of Himalaya mountains. It is the first time for black-necked cranes to choose Pagri Town as their winter habitat.
In recent years, Pagri Town, standing at a high altitude, has become increasingly warmer like other places of the world, with the annual average temperature of 0.2 degrees below zero centigrade.
Local meteorological data show that the current temperature in winter is much higher than in previous years, with the snow lines of the three surrounding snow-capped mountains rising markedly. The warmer climate has led to the melting of ice and snow, expansion of lakes and marshlands, and higher growth rate of shrubbery and meadow. All this provides plentiful food for the black-necked cranes.
The arrival of the black-necked cranes brings much fun to local residents. Every morning, these beautiful cranes search for food in small huddle or roost in farmland, making the scene in this highland town even more enchanting.
The black-necked crane, a bird species under national first-class protection, is the only kind of cranes living and reproducing on the Qinghai-Tibetan Plateau. Now, most of the world's black-necked cranes inhabit in China, mainly on the Qianghai-Tibetan Plateau, Yunnan-Guizhou Plateau, and northern Sichuan Province.
