Sarus crane

Sarus cranes eat plants and small animals.

They eat roots, grain, bugs and other small animals.

Sarus cranes are omnivores. They eat roots and tubers, water plants and grain, as well as insects and other small invertebrates, amphibians and other small animals.

They use their long bills to probe into the mud under shallow water. They like places with a mix of flooded, partly flooded and dry ground.

The IUCN describes an omnivorous diet of roots and tubers, invertebrates and amphibians; the International Crane Foundation lists aquatic plants, invertebrates, grains, small vertebrates and insects, and the World Land Trust adds crustaceans, describing birds probing the underwater mud with their long bills.

Sarus cranes prefer a mixture of flooded, partially flooded and dry ground for foraging, roosting and nesting (IUCN). Where wetlands are lost, they may feed on crops, where the World Land Trust says they can swallow pesticides.

Sarus cranes dance! They bow and call loudly.

A pair calls together like a song.

Sarus crane pairs dance, bow and make loud trumpeting calls during courtship, and a pair calls together in a duet. When they are nesting, they can be territorial and aggressive.

In India and Nepal, pairs often stay on their territory all year where there is enough water. Birds without a nest gather in flocks at bigger wetlands, and the biggest flocks form in summer, when there is much less wetland.

Courtship involves dancing, bowing and loud trumpeting (World Land Trust); pairs perform unison calls (International Crane Foundation). Within flocks there are subgroups of 2 to 4 birds, and nesting birds can become territorial and aggressive (World Land Trust).

In India and Nepal, breeding pairs keep territories year-round where water lasts all year, while non-breeders flock and roost at larger wetlands; flock size depends on wetland availability, with the largest flocks in summer (IUCN, after K. S. G. Sundar). In Southeast Asia and Australia, birds move to key non-breeding sites in the dry season and form sizeable gatherings (Archibald et al. 2003), and in parts of India and Australia they disperse seasonally with water.

There are not many sarus cranes left in some places.

People protect their nests and the wetlands where they live.

The sarus crane is listed as vulnerable. There are about 15,000 to 17,500 adults, and their numbers are going down, most of all in Southeast Asia. They have disappeared from Bangladesh, China, Malaysia, the Philippines and Thailand.

Wetlands are being drained for farms and towns, eggs are taken from nests, and some birds hit power lines. People protect nests in Cambodia and India, and sarus cranes have been brought back to Thailand.

BirdLife International assessed Grus antigone as Vulnerable (A2bcde+4bcde) for the IUCN Red List (assessed 30 April 2025, published 2025): a suspected rapid reduction, possibly over 30 percent in three generations, mostly in Southeast Asia, from land-use change and hunting; about 15,000 to 17,500 mature birds (best estimate 16,000), of which about 3,000 to 5,000 are in Australia, where numbers seem stable; the South Asian trend is highly uncertain. Indochina held about 250 mature birds in 2019 and Myanmar perhaps 400 to 600.

Threats include wetland drainage, urban and industrial growth, more intensive rice farming, dams, invasive plants, egg collecting, collisions with power lines and, possibly, poisoning by farm chemicals (IUCN; International Crane Foundation). Nest protection has run in Cambodia since 2004; 115 birds were released in Thailand from 2011 to 2019, where about 150 now live but are not yet known to be self-sustaining; and in 2025 six birds raised at Nakhon Ratchasima Zoo were sent to Tram Chim National Park in Vietnam's Mekong Delta to help bring the species back there (IUCN).