diagnostics
120-175 cm, 7.5-8.4 kg. A tall, stately crane of upland marshes. Sexes similar but male slightly larger. Head dark slaty grey above the eyes and crown, otherwise white, including the wattles, which are almost fully feathered and hang down from upper throat. Breast, primaries, secondaries, and tail coverts black. Secondaries long nearly reaching the ground. Upper breast and neck white extending up to the face. Back and wings ashy grey. Legs and toes black. Juveniles have tawny body plumage, lack the bare skin on the face, and have less prominent wattles (Allan 2005).
trophic
Wattled Crane breeding pairs in KwaZulu-Natal occupy areas from 960-2 066 masl where rainfall averages 925 mm per year (range 675-1 650 mm) while birds in Mpumalanga breed on an ecologically distinct, plateau-like watershed about 50 x 20 km in extent, at an altitude of 1 850-2 300 masl (Morrison and Bothma 1998). High annual rainfall (1 270 mm) and poor surface drainage have resulted in numerous permanently wet marshy areas (Tarboton 1984) with breeding territories being located in permanently inundated sedge wetlands (Meine and Archibald 1996). In the KwaZulu-Natal Midlands, active Wattled Crane breeding pairs used wetlands ranging in size from 10-300 ha (n = 32 wetlands). The average size of a breeding site was 106.5 ha (McCann et al. 2000). The generation length is 13 years (BirdLife International 2014).
