Flocks
Top 25 Wild Bird Photographs of the Week
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Flocks
Birds will often form aggregations known as flocks when they feed, or fly. The benefit of doing activities as part of a flock is that multiple birds can look out for danger while others forage or fly. Many species will also congregate to form mixed flocks that forage together, this may benefit solitary species that do not live in flocks by providing group protection.
Featured here are the Demoiselle Cranes from the Nava Talav in the Little Rann of Kutch.
Photographed: Jan 23, 2018 | Published: Nov 9, 2018
Demoiselle cranes are found in central Eurasia, they migrate in large flocks to their winter areas and are social when feeding and sleeping (Siddhartha Mukherjee)
The demoiselle crane (Grus virgo) is a species of crane found in central Eurasia, ranging from the Black Sea to Mongolia and North Eastern China. There is also a small breeding population in Turkey. These cranes are migratory birds. Birds from western Eurasia will spend the winter in Africa whilst the birds from Asia, Mongolia and China will spend the winter in the Indian subcontinent.
It is the smallest species of crane. The demoiselle crane is slightly smaller than the common crane but has similar plumage. It has a long white neck stripe and the black on the foreneck extends down over the chest in a plume. It has a loud trumpeting call, higher-pitched than the common crane. Like other cranes it has a dancing display, more balletic than the common crane, with less leaping.
The demoiselle crane is also known as the Koonj (कूंज, کونج, ਕੂੰਜ) in the languages of North India, and figure prominently in the literature, poetry and idiom of the region. Beautiful women are often compared to the koonj because its long and thin shape is considered graceful. Metaphorical references are also often made to the koonj for people who have ventured far from home or undertaken hazardous journeys.
The name koonj is derived from the Sanskrit word kraunch, which is a cognate Indo-European term for crane itself. In the mythology of Valmiki, the composer of the Hindu epic Ramayana, it is claimed that his first verse was inspired by the sight of a hunter kill the male of a pair of demoiselle cranes that were courting. Observing the lovelorn female circling and crying in grief, he cursed the hunter in verse. Since tradition held that all poetry prior to this moment had been revealed rather than created by man, this verse concerning the demoiselle cranes is regarded as the first human-composed meter. The flying formation of the koonj during migrations also inspired infantry formations in ancient India. The Mahabharata epic describes both warring sides adopting the koonj formation on the second day of the Kurukshetra War.