Turkmenistan celebrated World Crane Day
September 13, 2017 | 11:22 |1927
Cranes fly to Turkmenistan, the Kopetdag Nature Reserve officials said. In the sky over vast areas along the Amu Darya and Tejen, close to the Meana-Chaachinsky reserve, melodic "callsign" of proud cranes are heard every now and then. The flock that will remain for the winter is followed by other migratory birds, which will be monitored by the employees of the reserve. They count up to a thousand birds. ... The largest pre-flight cluster of Eurasian Cranes in Russia is the "Crane Homeland". This is the name of the reserve in the Moscow region. It is followed by Klyazma reserve, located on the border of the Ivanovo and Vladimir regions. In the valley of this river the gray cranes gather in thousands. Today there are still only several hundred here. Birds are gathered from other places. Cranes feed on the remains of grains in agricultural fields, insects, larvae, various pests.Leonid KIYASHKO, journalist, member of the Ivanovo Union of Bird Protection in Russia.
In the old days peasants valued this help, leaving an unharvested gore for the cranes on the field.
Now everything is different. People put scarecrows on the fields and layer the fields with white flags. It happened more than once that the cranes were shot. There were such cases on the memory of ornithologists who monitor the birds on Klyazma.
Yesterday they, by the way, solemnly celebrated the Day of the Crane.
This holiday is celebrated all over the world, as cranes can be found on almost all continents.
The day of the crane is also celebrated in Turkmenistan - in Durnaly near Kopetdag. This is a key ornithological territory of international importance, where I have been to such a holiday. And I know that the inhabitants of this craneland, judging by the name, village, have a custom to dance, imitating the flying cranes and calling them with alike sounding songs...
In the Ivanovo region, the holiday is also celebrated creatively. Birds are seen off, people are writing songs, making crafts. And this year the schoolchildren were lucky to see a unique costume, using which scientists feed the chicks of the cranes. And not gray, but Siberian Cranes, which also arrive in Turkmenistan.
The work was demonstrated by E.I. Ilyashenko, Executive Director of the Working Group on Eurasian Cranes.
Actually, the Crane Day was initiated fifteen years ago by this same group together with the Union for the Protection of Birds, in which, incidentally, I myself am a member. I came to this organization partly because it was interesting how the gray cranes that come from Russia to my native Turkmenistan live.
It was interesting to look at the Russian holiday, too. And it turned out to be very similar ... to the Turkmen one. The same, it turns out, is conducted in Ukraine, Kazakhstan and the Caucasus.
And I also saw with my own eyes (with the help of binoculars, of course) counting birds on Klyazma, going to places of pre-flight clusters with the head of the Ivanovo branch of the Union for the Protection of Birds, who made these wonderful pictures.
And then I found out where the cranes fly from the Russian expanse.
From the northern regions and the center of the country most of the cranes fly to the hot even in winter Africa past Black and over the Mediterranean Seas. The smallest part of cranes remains in Asia Minor, Syria, and Israel for wintering. These are the regions where skeins of cranes from Klyazma will go, where I admired these wonderful birds.
Cranes of the eastern regions of Siberia are keeping their way to China. And from the West - through Central Asia - to India.
The cranes of the Volga region fly to the southwest of Iran, but through my native Turkmenistan and the Caspian.
Good luck, the crane flocks!
You will see my beloved Homeland!
