Utilization Analysis Of Farmland Habitat By Red- Crowned Cranes In Zhalong Nature Reserve

Zhalong nature reserve, which occupies an important position in the world red-crowned crane protection community, is the main breeding colony and migratory stopover of West Line red-crowned crane. Farmland habitats is an indispensable Secondary habitats for the foraging of the red-crowned crane in Zhalong nature reserve. It is needed to better understand the use of farmland habitats in the life histroy cycle of red-crowned crane, so that we could conveniently develop management strategies and compensate for the losses made by red-crowned crane’s foraging. Investigations have been carried out from March to May in eight villages among Zhalong Nature Reserve core zone, buffer zone and experimental. We survey protected areas people crane conflict situations by questionnaire and interview. The farmland use behacior and habitat characteristics of the red-crowned crane,distributed around these surrounding villages,were monitored and analysied in spring and autumn with the method of behavioral observation, sampling method, fixed-point observation, factor analysis and so on.Community Economic Survey questionnaires were distributed and 156 were returned 100%,149 valid questionnaires. The survey showed that planting corn is the residents’ main source of income and the red-crowned cranes in general from the damage of corn seeding clashed with local residents.Foraging is the main behavior of red-crowned crane in the cornfield, followed by the alert behavior. Except a small amount of vigilance behavior, human disturbance response is not too strong. It is infered that red-crowned crane’s foraging behavior in cronfelid is related with their behavior rhythms, but has little relationship with the seasonal corn. Red-crowned crane feeding a specific height of corn seedlings, to avoid other choice. Red-crowned crane only feed corn seedings core, and they will bite out most out of maize seedings around where they foraged but choice part of the feedings, others are not eated; in autumn migration period, the Red-crowned crane perfer eating mature crop particles to store energy.By analysis of maize seedling farmland habitat utilization results,we can found that:(1) Red-crowned preferred to select the crop type with foraging preference choice for corn crops (100%), preferred to choose 2-5 leaf (94.32%) and avoided 1 leaf and more than 7 leaf (100%) of maize seedlings; (2) the feeding utilization of farmland habitat was selected according to food factors and disturbance factors; (3) effective food crops factors included height, density, crop area, distance of lakes, distance of reed marshes and other environmental factors; Among them, the choice of crop density of about 8 to 10 plants/m2, crop height is 6 to 7 cm, crop area of 4-50 ha sizes, a short distance from the lakes, reed swamp and similar about maintain 0,4 km; (4) disturbance factors included strong avoiding factors, such.as residential areas, with avoidance of areas greater than 1.0 km from residential areas, and weak avoiding factors, such as road, with neglect of areas greater above 0.20 km.In the spring, the main factors of farmland Foraging habitat selection is food and water, followed by hidden factors and human disturbance factors.Corn stubble farmland habitat utilization results showed that:the corn scattered particle density of farmland,which was seclced by red-crowned crane, is about 10 to 20/m2, and other environmental factors didn’t affect the corn seedling differently.main consideration factors of Foraging farmland selection is water and concealment, followed by food factors and human disturbance factors.