Live camera
Red-crowned cranes, Kushiro Marsh live camera
A vast wetland home to a protected species. With luck you catch one walking the grass, or the moment it takes off.
Sample August 2026What you are looking at
A corner of the Kushiro wetland. With some luck you will catch a red-crowned crane walking through the grass, or the moment one takes off.
Kushiro is the largest wetland in Japan; the national park covers roughly 28,000 hectares. In 1980 it became Japan's first Ramsar site. The red-crowned crane was once thought extinct here — a handful were rediscovered in this area in 1924, and feeding and protection since then have brought the population back past a thousand. It is designated a Special Natural Monument.
Six thousand years ago this wetland was an inlet of the sea. Sand closed the river mouth, cutting it off, and dead plant matter built up into a floor of peat. Besides the cranes, it still holds creatures that have grown scarce in Hokkaido, among them the Sakhalin taimen and the Siberian salamander.
Winter is when they are easiest to find. The grass has died back and flattened, snow simplifies the background, and the shape of a very large bird stands out against it. In summer the grass grows tall enough to hide one entirely. Winter is also when you may see the courtship dance, a pair facing each other with wings spread.
The image is a still refreshed hourly, so movement is out of reach. If nothing is there, come back in an hour.
About this camera
| Place | Kushiro, Hokkaido |
| Format | Still, hourly |
| Time zone | Asia/Tokyo (UTC+9) |
| Category | Nature · Wildlife |
| Operator | Ministry of the Environment — Internet Nature Institute |
| Terms of use | PDL 1.0 |
The operator's own page
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.
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