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.

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!