Kaziranga's Birds of Forest and Field

Kaziranga National Park, a World Heritage Site in northeastern India, is not only home to two-thirds of the world's Greater One-Horned Rhinoceros, wild Asian Elephants, and Tigers––it is also a designated Important Bird Area. Its exceptional biodiversity stems from its location at the margins of the Eastern Himalaya biodiversity hotspot.

It's a privilege to witness such a thriving, complete ecosystem.

The region is especially rich in raptors, and we saw many, including Pallas's Fish Eagle (a relative of our Bald Eagle), Booted Eagle, Steppe Eagle, and the rare Greater Spotted Eagle. Only a few cooperated for photos:

Crested Serpent Eagle (above and below)

Crested Serpent Eagles hunt for snakes and lizards in forested regions, often with wet grassland nearby. This striking raptor does most of its foraging in the morning, using a sit-and-wait strategy.

Gray-headed Fish Eagle

Yes, Gray-headed Fish Eagles are partial to fish! This nonmigratory eagle ranges across India and Southeast Asia, living in lowland forest with virtually any type of water body that supports fish. It even takes fish from the midst of rapids.

Some birds we encountered belong to families, even genera, which are familiar to North American birders––like shrikes and woodpeckers.

Long-tailed Shrike

A distinctive subspecies of Long-tailed Shrike, tricolor, occurs in this region and elsewhere in the Himalaya.

Gray-backed Shrike

Streak-throated Woodpecker

 Pigeons are also a familiar group, but in India they include the lovely green pigeons, which often feed on forest fruits like small figs.

Yellow-footed Green Pigeon

And then we find the really exotic groups, which only live in the Old World––the bulbuls, bee-eaters, laughingthushes, rollers, parrotbills, and many more! What fun!

Black-crested Bulbul

Blue-tailed Bee-eater

Highly migratory, the elegant Blue-tailed Bee-eater ranges across India and Southeast Asia. Like other bee-eaters, it specializes in foraging on bees and wasps, processing the prey by hammering it to dislodge the stinger. These bee-eaters will forage and nest colonially.

Indochinese Roller

Rollers are famous for their breath-taking aerial acrobatics, performed during courtship. Then the turquoise bands in the wings are startling to see. Even though it wasn't yet breeding season, a couple of the rollers were warming up for the big event, and treated us to a striking display. Rollers in the modern era are entirely Old World species, and probably originated in Africa, yet fossils of rollers from the Eocene have been found in North America's Green River Formation.

A Feast of Figs, India-Style

One morning en route to Kaziranga, when the fog was thick, we stopped at a local restaurant for hot tea to accompany our packed breakfasts. Towering over the restaurant was a giant fig tree, laden with fruit and birds.

Great Hornbills reached delicately with their giant bills to pluck the little figs.

A Great Hornbill, replete with figs

Several barbets, mynas and bulbuls also feasted on the figs.

Blue-throated Barbets joined the feast

Common Hill Myna

Golden-fronted Leafbird

Alexandrine Parakeet feasting on a different berry.

Meet the Bar-headed Goose and Friends!

Although the mega-mammals draw most of the visitors to Kaziranga National Park in India, the birdlife is equally stellar. Let's start with the denizens of shore and water.

Bar-headed Geese at Kaziranga National Park, India

(All photos by Narca)

For years, I have wanted to see a wild Bar-headed Goose––that very beautiful, rather small goose, which is renowned for its migrations from the Indian subcontinent over the high Himalaya to its breeding grounds in Central Asia. Thus, it is one of the world's highest-flying birds. Reports, possibly apocryphal, exist of this goose flying over Mt Everest! One tagged goose was documented to reach an elevation of 23,920 feet.

Research by Hawkes et al. ("The Trans-Himalayan Flights of Bar-headed Geese Anser indicus") depicts a bird that "undertakes the greatest rates of climbing flight ever recorded for a bird, and sustains these climb rates for hours on end" (Wikipedia).

Let's meet this marathoner!

Bar-headed Geese on their wintering grounds in Kaziranga

Keeping the Bar-headed Geese company at Kaziranga is a host of other waterbirds, including these handsome ducks:

Gregarious Lesser Whistling-Ducks

Ruddy Shelduck

The nonmigratory Indian Spot-billed Duck

Bronze-winged Jacanas are abundant at Kaziranga. Like other jacanas, their long toes enable them to walk on floating vegetation without sinking. The polyandrous females are slightly larger, and keep harems of about 3 or 4 males during the nesting season. One male in a harem will incubate the eggs and raise the young. Each female needs to produce enough eggs in a season to balance the high number of eggs lost to predators like turtles.

Adult Bronze-winged Jacana

Immature Bronze-winged Jacana

You can encounter Indian Pond Herons in habitats ranging from the wilds of Kaziranga to small ponds near human habitations.

Indian Pond Heron

A special wagtail spends most of its time near water: the Citrine. In breeding plumage, the males sport very bright yellow heads with a black nape.

An adult Citrine Wagtail in nonbreeding plumage

A nocturnal bird, the Indian Thick-knee rests in daytime in drier habitat above the water's edge. 

Indian Thick-knee

The distinctive Asian Openbill is a stork that specializes in feeding on snails. The gap between their mandibles only develops with age, and may increase the force which they can apply to a snail's shell. Young birds lacking the gap are still able to eat snails.

In January, the bird's plumage is largely gray, but during the breeding season, Openbills acquire a plumage of bright white and glossy black.

Kaziranga's Grand Rhinos

Kaziranga National Park, a UNESCO World Heritage Site in northeastern India, is among India’s finest national parks. The great Brahmaputra River flows through it, bringing annual cycles of flood to replenish the swamps and grasslands along its shore. The park holds a vast expanse of marsh, tall Elephant Grass (in which an elephant can hide!), and tropical broadleaf forest.

A Greater One-Horned Rhino with Wild Water Buffalos, Bar-headed Goose, egrets, and distant Eastern Swamp Deer in Kaziranga National Park, India 

(All photos by Narca)

On this Naturalist Journeys tour, our first visit to Kaziranga National Park was in late afternoon, when the mellow, slanting light revealed vistas of a big, shallow lake, surrounded by patches of forest––and chock-a-block with Greater One-Horned Rhinoceros, small Hog Deer, rare Eastern Swamp Deer, massive Sambar deer, wild Asian Elephants, Wild Water Buffalos, and hidden Tigers. As the afternoon passed, the glow lighting the rhinos and the wildlife-filled lake intensified. 

From some vantage points, it was possible to count 20 or more rhinos! They waded far into the water, foraged on the shore, and haunted the thick brush. Alluvial grassland is their habitat of choice.

Alluvial grassland habitat in Kaziranga National Park

Once these rhinos ranged across the entire plain surrounding India’s major rivers––the Ganges, Brahmaputra and Indus––but now that range has dwindled to only 11 sites in northern India and southern Nepal. It’s thought that about 3000 of the animals remain. Over 70% of the entire population of this rhino lives at a single site, right here in Kaziranga National Park. We were privileged to witness this ancient beast, flourishing in its natural state.

A close Greater One-Horned Rhino, with attendant mynas

Another afternoon brought a very close encounter with a One-Horned Rhino, which seemed nervous at first, but then returned to its foraging. Not all are so easily soothed. Apparently rhino encounters support an entire local industry of fixing cars which have been damaged by their charges.

In addition to the magnificent rhinos, Kaziranga also holds thriving populations of wild Asian Elephants.

An Asian Elephant bull at Kaziranga National Park

An extended family of Asian Elephants, foraging in tall Elephant Grass

Deer diversity at Kaziranga is high, with three species.

 A small Hog Deer, one of three deer species at Kaziranga

The Eastern Swamp Deer, a recent split from Barasingha, is found only in swamp grasslands of the Indian state of Assam. It is even more endangered than the rhino. Until recently, this deer lived in several locales, but poaching extirpated all the populations away from Kaziranga. At the penultimate hour, a recovery plan for the deer was developed and implemented, and a herd of 19 deer was translocated to Manas National Park, later augmented by a herd of 17. Those translocated deer have survived at Manas, and their numbers were recently estimated to be 80-100.

 Smooth-coated Otters also lounge and play at the water's edge.

 

Smooth-coated Otters in Kaziranga

We climbed a tower to overlook some of the extensive wetlands.

Our leaders––Carlos Sanchez of Naturalist Journeys and Avijit Sarkhel of Vana Safaris––scope the wetlands from the tower.

Next installment: the birds of Kaziranga!

Red Pandas!

Come with me to the Himalayan fastness of Singalila National Park, high along the border of India and Nepal, and home to the superlative Red Panda.

Red Panda, Singalila National Park (All photos by Narca)

Recently I joined an India tour run by Naturalist Journeys and Vana Safaris. A major focus of the trip was to seek out special mammals––Red Pandas, Greater One-Horned Rhinos and Tigers––and, of course, any of the region's amazing birds that came within binocular range.

Let's start at 10,000 feet, in the Nepali village of Tumling. Avijit Sarkhel of Vana Safaris had found lodging for us in a simple homestay in Tumling, run by extremely welcoming hosts. 

Homestay in Tumling, Nepal

Some expeditions require effort above and beyond the norm. Avi brought his own team of 11 people to help with group logistics. Think 10,000 feet in the Himalayas in January: yep, it was cold. To help the situation, Avijit brought propane heaters for each of our rooms, extra blankets, and hot water bottles for the beds at night. Hot water in a bucket was available each evening for face-washing, so it would theoretically have been possible to take a sponge bath, but no one did! It was much too cold, and we forewent our customary showers (anticipating our return to the showers of the Holiday Inn in Kolkata). On a couple of mornings, we woke to ice on the inside of our windows and frozen water pipes. Birders––and panda watchers––are tough!

Patio and dining room of the homestay

As breakfast was readied, we would gather on the patio of the homestay, overlooking the garden and the hills beyond. Our hostess has taken on the project of reforesting the nearby hillside with native rhododendrons, visible in the distance in the photo above. The new trees appear to be thriving.

Blue-throated Redstart

Blue-throated Redstarts certainly approved of the garden habitat; they foraged here throughout the day, joined occasionally by Yellow-billed Blue Magpies, Black-faced Laughingthrushes, Rufous-breasted Accentors, and Dark-breasted Rosefinches. One big flock of Plain Mountain Finches swirled around the hillsides, in a manner very reminiscent of North American rosy-finches.

Kachenjunga, India's highest mountain

From the main road through Tumling, we could see Kachenjunga––a fabled mountain, and India's highest at 28,169 feet. Kachenjunga! I grew up absorbing my mother's love of high mountains and hearing tales of her friend Donna's frequent treks in the Himalayas. Kachenjunga was a household name, and here it was!

 Main road winding through Tumling, at the border of Nepal and India

Prayer flags festoon the ridge above Tumling

 An adult Himalayan Griffon, soaring over Tumling

 Our first two mornings were dedicated to Red Pandas. We lingered, birding, on the main road at the village, while we waited for word to reach Avijit from the Red Panda scouts. Once they located a panda, we hopped in jeeps and traversed the rocky road to the Red Panda reserve.

Now, the road we traversed was not the one normally traveled. Recent snow had closed the good road, so we came and went on an exceedingly rocky, snow-free road, which required an hour to go 6 kilometers. But the journey was well worth the jarring!

Forest in Singalila National Park

Once we arrived, Avi's team helped us up and down the steep hillside to the mossy tree favored that day by a Red Panda. The pandas were quite aware of us, but were inclined to stay in their lofty perches, yawning, stretching and staring at us. Because the terrain was so steep, we could look directly across to each panda. What fine encounters with a remarkable creature!

Red Pandas in Singalila National Park

The main conservation group working to conserve endangered Red Pandas and their habitat is the Red Panda Network in Nepal. They sponsor trained forest guardians to monitor and protect the pandas and their habitat, thus employing local people in remote villages. Deforestation is the primary threat.

Red Pandas are not closely related to Giant Pandas, and, indeed, are in their own family of mammals, the Ailuridae. Red Pandas are part of a superfamily that includes raccoons and skunks; Giant Pandas sprang from the bear lineage. 

Even though bamboo is a primary part of their diet, Red Pandas also eat eggs, insects, birds and fruits. Their diet is less restricted than that of a Giant Panda's. 

Flocks of mountain birds enlivened the Red Panda's environs, many of them foraging on fruit.

A Stripe-throated Yuhina feeding on fruit

Male White-collared Thrush, a relative of our American Robin, 

also feeding on fruit