Keoladeo National Park

Keoladeo Ghana National Park

State : Rajasthan Area : 28 sq. km Altitude: 173 - 175 m Vegetation : Tropical Dry deciduous

Keoladeo Ghana National Park is a birding heaven in Bharatpur, which is recognized as one of the most important breeding and feeding grounds for many bird species of the world.

Previously known as the shooting preservation for Maharaja Suraj Mull of Bharatpur, it was listed  as a UNESCO World Heritage site in 1985.

 The Park is recognised as one of the most important breeding and feed grounds for the birds in the world. This magnificent bird haven used to be a duck shooting preserve for Maharaja Suraj Mull of Bharatpur. He transformed the shallow depression formed by the confluence of River Gambhir and River Banganga into a reservoir by damming the rainwater in monsoons. In 1985 UNESCO listed it as World Heritage site and earlier in 1982 it was declared as National Park.

In the nesting season the sound of birds can be so loud as to drown out human conversation! And the buzz of insects pervades the air, always. Grass grows out from the still waters of the many wetlands, together with lotus, duckweed, water fern and sedge – food for countless living things such as frogs, snails, mosquitoes, dragonflies, fish, water snakes and birds that collectively conspire to make the Keoladeo Ghana National Park in Bharatpur, Rajasthan, a World Heritage and Ramsar Site.

In August local birds start their nest building and rear their young for the next few months. October/November is when the migrants arrive. Most stay till March including the Siberian Crane. Ground nesters like the lapwings and curlews nest in summer and this is also when cranes show their amazing courtship dance. The weaverbirds build their pendulous nests just before the rains and hundreds of them are found in the park, a bank of ceaseless activity.

Avifauna : Waterfowl are gadwall, shoveler, common teal, cotton teal, tufted duck, knob-billed duck, little cormorant, great cormorant, Indian shag, ruff, painted stork, white spoonbill, Asian open-billed stork, oriental ibis, darter, common sandpiper, wood sandpiper and green sandpiper, sarus crane, warblers, babblers, bee-eaters, bulbuls, buntings, chats, Painted francolins and quails, Indian grey hornbill and Marshall's iora. Raptors include osprey, peregrine falcon, Pallas' sea eagle, short-toed eagle, tawny eagle, imperial eagle, spotted eagle and crested serpent eagle.