Crane Migration: the Greatest Autumn Attraction in the Hortobágy

MTI-Hungary Today 2023.10.24.

Crane migration is one of the biggest autumn spectacles of the Hortobágy wilderness (eastern Hungary), with around 250,000 cranes visiting the area between early October and mid-November, said Agriculture Minister István Nagy in a video posted on social media.

The minister noted that based on the latest measurements, 54,000 birds visited Lake Gondás in this area, while a record number of almost 183,000 birds have been seen by the staff of the Hortobágy National Park this year.

Cranes are regular migrant birds in Hungary, with larger numbers in the Hortobágy and in southeastern Hungary. Photo via Wikipedia

István Nagy mentioned that the cranes spending the summer in northern Europe gather at their usual resting places during their journey to Africa. This is how groups of thousands of them stay in the shallow water areas of the Hortobágy National Park.

He added that the cranes’ activity shows an easily described daily rhythm.

They spend the nights in wetlands, then fly out after sunrise to feeding areas and return to roosting grounds at sunset. This is the distinctive cycle used by crane counters.

Since 2010, large-scale conservation investments have been made in our country. This is shown by the fact that the ten national parks have been able to carry out 465 developments worth a total of around HUF 90 billion (EUR 35 million). This has improved the environmental status of more than 300,000 hectares of nature, the minister emphasized.

In the period of the Environment and Energy Operational Program 2014-2023, supporting sustainable growth, national parks used HUF 40 billion (EUR 104.8 million) of funds, and implemented 92 investments on an area of about 100 thousand hectares, said Nagy.

He pointed out that the majority of the developments focused on habitat reconstruction, two thirds of which were implemented as wetland reconstruction, areas of unique value in the Carpathian Basin.

Fact

Hortobágy is an 800 square kilometer national park in eastern Hungary, rich with folklore and cultural history. The park, a part of the Great Plain, was designated as a national park in 1973 (the first in Hungary), and elected among the World Heritage Sites in 1999. The Hortobágy is Hungary’s largest protected area, and the largest semi-natural grassland in Europe. One of its most iconic sites is the Nine-holed Bridge. Part of the national park is a dark sky preserve.

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Via MTI, Featured image via Wikipedia