Monitoring the crane population staging and wintering
in the Hula Valley, Israel:
the relation with farming activities
Dan Alon
Israel Ornithological Center - SPNI
Abstract. The increasing use of the Hula Valley, an area of no more than 10 sq. km, by the cranes during winter has been related with the cultivation of a new crop: peanuts. Although the cranes, as well as many other species, have been using the Hula during migrations for decades, only
recently they stop there to winter in increasing numbers: up to ten thousend in the last years. They feed on the peanut fields after the harvest, mainly undigging the tubers of nut-grass.
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The number of cranes in the Hula Valley and in Israel from middle of the nineteenth century until the present. |
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1.jpg)
(Source: Alon, D.
1999.
Where the birds are. Eretz. The Geographic Magazine from Israel. 67: 21-22.)
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