Bird-Visiting at Bharatpur

We drove to Bharatpur over the weekend to see the birds at the Keoladeo National Park.This is a wetland of extraordinary beauty and we spent a December morning here, partly ferried on cycle rickshaws and partly on foot looking at the feathered visitors afoot. At the start of the national park, amidst scrub and dry stretches there were the occasional yellow-green pigeons,the bulbuls and the babblers and the tailor birds, but as we neared the swampland, the landscape became magical and the inhabitants increasingly varied and exotic. The white breasted kingfishers seemed to strike poses as they sat facing visitors or in side profile, ostensibly looking for living food. Large female neelgai grazed in the distance. The water was full of migratory ducks and geese. Saw the whistling geese and the bar headed geese, and an array of Pochard and pin tailed ducks, to say nothing of a small herd of Sambhar poised on watery territory, choosing to munch water soaked greens. There were black and purple moorhens and small and large teams of coots. Many migratory birds could be seen dotting the water, far away from human sight,and clearly far less tolerant of human intrusions into their territory. The birds were a delight. The grey stork and the purple heron stood in all their splendour, shutting us out and focusing on the fish. little mounds of green in the swamps housed a host of birds that amicably shared standing space. I saw the red and black crow pheasant for the first time, and the young ones of the scope owl who had decided that they wanted at least the early morning out. There were a large number of eagles, who flew over head, steering and wheeling in the sky, diving down to annoy the whistling ducks and coots and purple moor hens whenever they saw fit. The geese whistled and flew off, but the moor hens and coots just scuttled away from the eagle's attention.

The trees en route to Bharatpur turn into cormorant rookeries, but the bird that was for me the showstopper on this trip was the oriental darter or the snake bird that dived and swam, looking for fish. The darter tosses up the fish it catches and then grabs it in mid-air before making a meal of it and a generous wildlife photographer showed me pictures to this effect. However, this extraordinary bird, around the size of the cormorant, has a snake like head and looks quite like an eel when it is in the water. Once it has had its share of fun, it surfaces and stands on a mound or atop a low branch, spreading out its wings and allowing them to dry. The cormorants do this too, because apparently unless their wing feathers are completely dry, they cannot really fly. Which is perhaps why the proverb speaks off how effortlessly water slides off a duck’s back. The cormorants and darters have not been similarly equipped with waterproof feathers by nature. Possibly, these are details overlooked from an earlier evolutionary design., but of course, I say this whimsically. Anyway, the darters holding up their wings to the sun and skies were possibly the inspiration for the caped superheroes we have created to save the world we are so busy wrecking. Since, that isn't working after all, watching darters at work and play is a real choice available to all of us.