Gould commented 'By the earlier writers, who associated the Cranes with Storks and Herons, we are told that it nested in Britain; but this is no longer the case, and we now only hear of an example having been captured in our islands at uncertain intervals, our country having evidently become unfitted for such fine birds as the Crane, the Ibis, and the Spoonbill, all of which are now rarely seen.'

The illustration shows a scene witnessed by Wolf on the Rhine. The cranes are gathered together in preparation for migration, and in the sky is a V-shaped migratory formation of cranes in flight.

The foreground Crane is about one-third life-size.

DISTRIBUTION: Breeds Eurasia from Scandinavia and Germany east to Kolyma river, Turkestan, west China to Manchuria. Winters south to northwest and northeast Africa, Middle East, southern India and southeast Asia. In Britain in recent years passage migrants regularly recorded in small though variable numbers. Bred in East Anglia, up to seventeenth century and then not again in Britain until a small group became established in Norfolk in 1979