Wildlife
The cranes of the Izumi plain: 1 Live Camera in Japan
The largest crane wintering ground on earth. Over ten thousand hooded and white-naped cranes gather on this plain each winter. Refreshed hourly by the Environment Ministry.
What you can see
The plain at Izumi, in Kagoshima Prefecture, is the world's largest wintering ground for hooded and white-naped cranes. In a good year more than ten thousand arrive, and for hooded cranes it is said that the majority of the entire world population winters here.
What the camera shows is fallow winter paddy. When the cranes are in, the frame fills with dark birds scattered across it. Hooded cranes are grey-black with a white neck, white-naped cranes grey with red around the face — though at this distance telling them apart is hard, and the number itself is the sight.
So much concentration in one place also means a disease outbreak could threaten the species as a whole, and there is ongoing work to spread them out.
Cameras you can watch now: 1
All 1 are still images. Tap one to open it in the camera list.
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Sample August 2026
Cranes on the Izumi plain
Izumi, Kagoshima · Nature · Wildlife
Reclaimed farmland where over ten thousand cranes winter. Between October and March the frame can fill with birds.
When to watch
This camera's season is absolute.
The cranes arrive around mid-October, peak between November and February, and head north around March. Open it between April and September and what is there is a rice field.
For time of day, morning and late afternoon. The cranes feed in the surrounding fields during the day and return to roost in the evening, so the flock is together around sunrise and sunset. An hourly refresh will almost never catch the moment of a bird taking off or landing, but the difference in numbers between morning and evening is plain.
Where The cranes of the Izumi plain is
Agencies publishing the cameras on this page
- Ministry of the Environment — Internet Nature Institute (PDL 1.0) — Official site
The footage belongs to each agency. This site is an unofficial guide, and each sample frame was copied once per camera under that agency's terms of use.