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.