Migratory Bird Protection Area of the Poyang Lake, Jiangxi China

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Poyang Lake

The migratory bird protection area of the Poyang Lake is located south of Jiujiang, Jiangxi Province, China. It is not only a beautiful scenic spot, but also it is even a famous "rare fowls kingdom".

With average area of 3,583km, the Poyang Lake is the biggest freshwater lake in China and the water is vast. There abound whitebait and mandarin fish in the lake.

Every April and September the lake water rises, the area can reach 4,600 square km. This is the best time for reproduction of the water animals in the Poyang Lake, the fish, shrimp, spiral, shell and so on reproduce quickly. It is a dry season from October to March next year, the water level falls greatly and the lake surface area falls to 500 square km.

There are many lake beaches and grass islands around the lake, the water grass, spiral, shell and so forth in the islands and beaches become the rich food for the migratory birds.

Regarded Wucheng Town of Yongxiu Prefecture in Jiangxi Province as the center, the migratory bird protection area of the Poyang Lake covers nine lakes of the Poyang Lake and occupies an area of 224 square km.

The geography and climate here suit for the northern migratory birds to stop and winter, so every November thousands of migratory birds fly here from Siberia of Russia, External Mongolia, Beihaidao of Japan, Korea, the northeast and northwest places of China. They winter with wild ducks, egret, mandarin ducks and so on together, only till March next year they just fly back to north.

Presently, there are more than 200 kinds of birds in the migratory bird protection area of the Poyang Lake, they are as many as one million. Among them, there are over 20 kinds of rare fowls. It is the biggest bird protection area in the world. It is very special that there is a biggest group of white cranes all over the world and rare cranes such as horary cranes and grey cranes, altogether more than 4,000 cranes.

According to the statistics of related locality units in 1989, people find there are over 2,600 white cranes in the protection area unexpectedly, occupying 95% of all the white cranes in the whole world. So the Poyang Lake is called "white cranes' world" or "rare fowls kingdom" in recent years.

Some describe the grand scene of the migratory bird protection area of the Poyang Lake by saying of "they can screen cloud and moon when flying, lake grass cannot be seen when falling". At the same time you can see precious birds such as white stork, black stork, small swan, mandarin duck and white forehead goose.