Keoladeo Ghana Bird Sanctuary

The Keoladeo Ghana Bird Sanctuary was initially created by Maharaja Suraj Mal, because he had some great ideas – not of conservation, but of the possibility of a constant supply of waterfowl for the royal dining table. At that time, it used to be a scrubby depression of land, seasonally enlivened by ephemeral ponds of water following the monsoons.
These ponds attracted some unsuspecting migratory ducks and geese in the winter months, and so Suraj Mal decided to turn it into a permanent reservoir, the Arjun Bund. and soon, Bharatpur,Keoladeo Ghana Bird Sanctuary became one of India's most productive hunting reserves. So much so that the British officials used to vie for invitations!

The 16 square miles of marsh known as the Ghana jheel (ghana means dense, and jheel lake) hosted such grand duck shoots that no serious sportsman could afford to miss it. Colonel Sawai Brijendra Singh, a later maharaja of Bharatpur, explains: "The jheel had islands to which I constructed little roads that were wide enough for cars to take VIPs out to their butts… Each duck shoot took months to arrange and to see that VIPs were not given bad butts was like making the seating arrangement for a dinner party. At the last moment someone would say, "Sorry, I can't come", and you then had to go through the list seeing who should go into a VIP butt and who could have his place." Yet when it came to the largest bags, even Bharatpur had to give way to the imperial sandgrouse shoots at Bikaner.


¤ Flora & Fauna

The Keoladeo Ghana Bird Sanctuary is now home to more than 370 species of birds. This large number comes somewhat as a surprise, considering what went on earlier in the name of a game. The site has gone through some of the worst events of duck shoots in the world. In November 1938, the then Viceroy Lord Linlithgow and his party massacred as many as 4273 ducks and geese. Linlithgow had with him two loaders to help him reload, and his guns got so hot with the rapid firing that they had to be sloshed regularly with cold water!

There's also a small temple in the Keoladeo Ghana Bird Sanctuary which has a pillar near it with an inscription that reveals that over 5000 ducks were shot in one day alone. But thankfully things somewhat changed after Independence. Ghana became a Sanctuary in 1956, and graduated to being a National Park in 1981. This unique water-bird haven is recognized by the UNESCO as a world heritage site. The Keoladeo Ghana Bird Sanctuary provides unlimited opportunities for the bird watcher, wildlife photographer, nature writer, researcher in biology and, of course, the travel freak. The vegetation of the area is that of mixed deciduous forest type with plants like babool (Acacia arabica), ber and khajur.


¤ During Springs The Keoladeo Ghana Bird Sanctuary Comes To Life

The first shower of the season makes the park come alive, teeming with hundreds of feathered species. Cormorants, darters, spoonbills, ibises, herons, egrets, cranes, pelicans, flamingos, geese, ducks, larks, chats, kites, buntings, eagles, harriers, owls, vultures, kingfishers and many more are the part of this vibrant wetland, building nests in an estimated 50,000 trees. There are few places in the world where such a variety of birds can be so easily observed.

Visitors have claimed to have seen at least 80 species of birds among the 370 apart from some animals like the jackal, mongoose, sambar (large Asiatic deer), wild boar, turtles, monitor lizards within just half an hour of stepping into the park.

Wildlife enthusiast Charlie Pye-Smith gives a wonderful account of his visit: "Vast numbers of egret, stork, cormorant, spoonbill, ibis and heron had turned a babool wood into a raucous and smelly slum.
Jacana, pond heron and white breasted waterhen stalked silently over the lily pads while whiskered tern and pied kingfisher plunged into open water in search of fish and eels. In the dry scrub beyond the water's edge there were mynahs, drongos, shrikes, bee-eaters and parakeets. The geese and ducks which fly south from the northern breeding grounds to spend the winter here had just begun to trickle in, but it was too early for Bharatpur's most famous, the Siberian crane.

The first to arrive are the herons, followed by egrets, cormorants, ibis, spoonbills and storks, then the winter migrants from the Arctic Tundra and western Siberia – numerous species of ducks, geese, coots, eagles, harriers and cranes. The new arrivals merge with the residents and a cacophony of sounds results.
Valmik Thapar in his book Land of the Tiger has given a descriptive account of this bird paradise and the birds in it. According to him, seven of the world's 17 species of stork are found here, the most numerous and eye-catching being the painted stork, a large, long-legged, long-necked bird, rather ungainly on land but with an elegant soaring flight. It is predominantly white with black and white wings, earning the description 'painted' from the oddly contrasting pink patches on its back, orangy-pink head and legs and paler yellowy-pink bill.


¤ Attractions of Siberian Crane

Four species of crane visit Keoladeo Ghana Bird Sanctuary, including the famous Siberian crane, but the Sarus crane is resident. A large grey bird with a red head and nearly as tall as a man, the Sarus crane is much venerated as a symbol of marital bliss in India. Sarus cranes pair for life, and locals believe that if one dies, the other will die of a broken heart.
The Sarus courtship display is one of the most magnificent bird spectacles in the world. The couple bow, circle round each other with outspread wings, throw back their long necks, take great leaps into the air, all the while uttering their far reaching, trumpeting call.


¤ Other Aerial Attractions

Keoladeo Ghana Bird Sanctuary is the permanent home of four species of eagles: the Pallas fishing eagle, the short-toed eagle, the tawny eagle and the lesser spotted eagle. It is also the winter home of five other eagle species, including the crested serpent eagle, a local migrant that comes to feast on the countless snakes that breed in the wetland. Other winter visitors include the Bonelli's hawk eagle, the imperial eagle and the greater spotted eagle. Even the white-tailed sea eagle has occasionally visited Bharatpur.
"Dusk in Keoladeo Ghana Bird Sanctuary is owl time." The most spectacular of Bharatpur's eight species is the Indian eagle owl or great horned owl, but dusky horned owls, mottled wood owls, spotted owlets and collared scope owls are found in the woodlands near water's edge.