Keoladeo Ghana Bird Sanctuary
Distance : 5km south of
Bharatpur
Area : 29 sq km
Population : 16,46,501 (humans)
Temperature : Ranges from 49 ºC to 2 ºC
Rainfall : 650mm
¤ A Paradise For Aerial
Population
‘Keoladeo Ghana’ name signifies the location of the temple
of Lord Shiva (Keoladeo) in the centre of the Park and dense (ghana)
forest covering the area. It's a soggy green paradise, an ideal home
for a large variety of birds.
Scores of migratory species undertake a perilous journey over the
Himalayas to make a seasonal home in this wetland ecosystem, the most
famous of them being the magnificent but nearly extinct Siberian crane
(Grus leucogeranus). This interlocking ecosystem of woodlands, swamps,
wet prairies and dry Savannah is considered to be one of the world's
richest heronries, where thousands of birds get busy courting, mating
and nesting.
¤ Foundation of The 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.
¤ A Saga of Survival
The Siberian crane normally reaches Keoladeo Ghana Bird Sanctuary
before December and stays till March, a tradition which has been
carried on for thousands of years. This was rediscovered by German
naturalist Peter S. Pallas in the 18th century.
Traditionally, Fered Unkenar in Iran and Keoladeo Ghana Bird Sanctuary
are the only two wintering places for the western race of the Siberian
crane. It reaches Bharatpur after a journey of 6,400 kilometres from
the cold Siberian breeding grounds.
¤ The Most Choosen Home of Siberian Cranes
Braving all the frost and blizzard of the Gobi desert and the
Himalayas, the Sibes or Siberian cranes chose to come all the way to
bask in the warmth of Keoladeo Ghana Bird Sanctuary during the winter
months. Happily they flew in plenty before Ghana was formally created
by Bharatpur's maharaja. Then those terrible duck shoots began, and
the poor creatures got frightened to their bones and stopped their
yearly visits.
Much to the delight of ornithologists, these handsome birds appeared
again in the 60s, long after the killings had stopped. and by 1964-5
over 200 of them came to winter here. But happy times were short
lived; their numbers started dwindling again, and in 1990-1 only 10
cranes came.
Then in 1994-5 none came at all. In 1996, however, four Sibes were
spotted in Keoladeo about two months after their usual time of arrival
and ornithologists all over heaved a huge sigh of relief. All this
definitely points to the gradual extinction of these wonderful birdes.
The total population of the Siberian crane now across the world is
less than 2000.
¤ The Decreasing Population of Saberian Cranes
There are many reasons to this lamentable depletion. A pair of
breeding cranes raise only one chick a year, and though the adult
stands more than a mighty four feet tall, the tiny young ones often
become the food for predatory shorebirds, gulls and dogs. En route
their migration to Keoladeo Ghana Bird Sanctuary they have to face
dangers that are even more dangerous than the hostile terrain –
guns. Every year many of these birds are shot down in Afghanistan and
Pakistan, despite protective laws in these countries. The remaining
few alive reach Bharatpur exhausted, only to find that there's no food
for them any more! Courtesy, the Forest Department's brilliant
policies.
What happened was this. In 1982 the Forest Department declared, in
all sincerity, that villagers be moved out of the park with their bag
and baggage. They believed that the buffaloes owned by these villagers
were readily depleting the Keoladeo Ghana Bird Sanctuary's resources.
But what the officials did not realize was that these buffaloes also
ate up a lot of those weeds which were harmful for the growth of the
cranes' food plants.
and the cranes being fussy about their food, ate only the rhizomes
and tubers of some aquatic plants, around which these weeds like the
water hyacinth and certain sedges grew. Once the buffaloes were barred
from the park, these weeds grew rampant leading to the closure of the
cranes' restaurant.
¤ Postscript
Some time back, the homeless villagers tried to re-establish
themselves and their livestock in the park. But they were met by armed
police, and seven of them were killed "for doing no more than
exercising what they considered to be a traditional right."
Visiting Hours : 0600-1800
Accommodation : Forest Rest house, ITDC Lodge, Saras Tourist
Bungalow, Golbagh Palace Hotel.
Note : Motor vehicles are prohibited beyond a point in the
Keoladeo Ghana Bird Sanctuary (about 1.5km beyond the main entrance).
There's a sealed road going though the Park interconnected by a series
of raised embankments. Walking or cycling along these embankments is
the best way of exploring the birdlife. However, the government
authorized cycle rickshaws (with a yellow plate in front) are also
great, because the rickshaw puller might be able to tell you more
about birds than any ornithologist.
In fact it was one of these trained rickshaw pullers, Runghu Singh,
who first spotted the four Sibes in 1996 (see above). The southern
reaches of the Park are best for serious bird watching.
Do's and Don'ts : Come armed with mosquito repellents, for
these stingers can be a real nuisance near marshy areas.
Tourist office
Tourist reception Centre
Near RTDC Hotel Saras
Agra Road
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