Love found
Seeking Love
Wang’s team received information via the tracker about Love every day for the next twenty days.
Then people started to wonder about its whereabouts. The International Crane Foundation and the China Crane Federation Insurance Association mobilized the wildlife protection agencies in the 15 provinces white cranes have traveled through in the past years to pay close attention.
Several months had passed but there was not a single piece of information about it.
Things turned for the better on December 22, 2018, when Huang Gaochao, honorary chairman of the Photographers Association of Dongying City, in East China’s Shandong province, went to the Yellow River Delta National Nature Reserve to photograph migratory birds.
He unexpectedly found two white cranes through the camera lens. He was so excited and took pictures of them chasing each other and playing happily. He found one of them had a No S26 ring on its right foot, but did not know its name and where it came from.
Huang sent the pictures of the bird to his WeChat group, a popular messaging app in China, from which they were forwarded them to the Dongying Bird Appreciation WeChat Group. By accident, Shan Kai, a senior engineer of bird and wetland conservation of the Yellow River Delta Reserve Administration was online at the China Crane Joint Protection Family.
Liu Guanhua, a researcher of the Poyang Lake Reserve Administration in Jiangxi province, saw the pictures and it occurred to him that Wang’s team had rescued a white crane which later got lost.
He immediately sent the photos to Wang for confirmation: "Is this the white crane you guys are looking for?"
Wang was overwhelmed with joy: it was the lost Love.
However, Wang’s team decided not to catch it for a checkup for fear that it may cause Love too much stress.
“I hope Love will stay healthy and one day return to our Poyang Lake,” said Kuang Shaoxiang, a member of Wang’s team.
About Love’s lost-and-found story, Li Zengming, who first spotted it on the reservoir, knows nothing. He still often takes his family to Nanchang, passing the reservoir. Occasionally he looks towards the water with a flashing thought: Will the white crane that he once rescued come back someday?
