Stopover Ecology Of Siberian Crane In Huanzidong Wetland In Shenyang City Liaoning Province

Huanzidong wetland is located in the northern suburb of Shenyang City, Liaoning Province, which is extremely important stopover for migrating waterbirds. A large number of rare waterfowl transit here each year. We observed stopover ecology of the Siberian Crane (Grus leucogeranus) including migration dynamics, behavior, habitat utilization, population ratio in2011’s spring and autumn. While we also studied the aquatic environment characteristics in Huanzidong wetland.We used fixed-point observation, line transects observation, scan sampling, behavioral sampling for watching birds. Our results showed that the crane staged in Huanzidong from March19when there were120birds to April10when there were16birds; the peak appeared on March30with a total of1474birds, and the baby number was70. The cluster crane proportion in juvenile crane was a little lower which was around4%. Because water was too deep in the wetland in Autumn, there was no crane group. The cranes usually came in days suddenly being warm. The cranes increased their feeding time with daily temperature risen, the longer sunlight and the larger ice melt. The daily activities length was about10hours. Feeding behavior was the major behavior in a day. Most of the cranes chose the edge of the flooded farmland and shallow water to forage, which was about20cm deep. By analyzing the results of the crane’s migrating observation and the crane’s feeding ground sampling, we learned that: though there were crane’s food in both spring and autumn, there was no crane group stayed in Huanzidong wetlands in the autumn, because the water level in fall is too high.The main food of the crane were the tubers of Scirpus fluviatilis, Scirpus triqueter roots, and stems of aquatic plants. The Huanzidong wetland vegetation was started in the summer. We set64samples in total. Each plot area of1m2;1/4of the standard plots selected not easy to collect points, which is0.25m2. We got the information of the plant species, quantity, growth, aboveground biomass and underground biomass. Our results showed that there were36species of the aquatic plants belonging to27generas,21families, and the dominant species were Echinochloa caudata and Scirpus triqueter, whose met frequency were45.31%and41.79%, respectively.In the course of the investigation, we also surveyed the waterfowl in Huanzidong wetland. In the waterfowl, there were4species as national level I protection animal, accounting for6.25%of the total; and11species as the national level II protection animal, accounting for17.1875%of the total.