[7] A small group of 20 to 40 was once known to regularly visit the Subansiri area in the Apa Tani valley[8] until 1975,[9] and vagrants have been recorded in Nepal.

[12] In 1996, there were about 4,000 of the birds, most of whom spent their winters in Tibet in the valleys of the Nyanga, Lhasa and Pengbo rivers and the middle reaches of the Yarlung Tsangpo.

[13] The Hutoushan Reservoir in the Pengbo valley is an important winter resting place, with a 96 square kilometres (37 sq mi) Linzhou Black-necked Crane Preservation Zone established in 1993.

[15][16] Black-necked cranes also winter in small numbers in two valleys of western Arunachal Pradesh, India.

[20] They feed on the tubers of sedges, plant roots, earthworms, insects and other invertebrates, frogs and other small vertebrates.

[20] Like many other crane species, they are believed to form long-lasting pair bonds and dancing displays are made during the breeding season.

[20] The nest site is usually a pre-existing mud island inside a large shallow wetland, sometimes shared along with bar-headed goose.

Short, subdued nasal "kurrr" calls are used by the family to keep in contact and also by adults to indicate availability of food to juveniles.

An incident of leopards preying on the roosting cranes during the night has been recorded from the Phobjika valley of Bhutan.

The problems are most serious in the wintering areas, where wetlands are extensively affected by human activity including irrigation, dam construction, draining, and grazing pressure.

In Tibet, widespread changes in traditional agricultural practices have reduced the availability of waste barley and spring wheat.

A 2024 study, based on metabarcoding of bird feces, found that black-necked cranes from the Dashanbao Black-necked Crane National Nature Reserve, China, harboured at least eight species of helminth parasites and three of protozoan parasites, and were carrying free-living amoebae.

[30] This article incorporates text from the ARKive fact-file "Black-necked crane" under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License and the GFDL.