Krrk, krrrk

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I mentioned demoiselle cranes in the last blog as a taster of things to come. A few months ago the BBC had an India series which included a wildlife programme from all different parts of India. That was where we saw about the small town of Khichan/Kheechan where the local community started putting feed out for visiting demoiselle cranes about 30 years ago which has created an amazing wildlife spectacle and we wanted to see it!

We said our goodbyes to Ashish and got in the car we had booked to take us the 120km to Khichan. It seems that many people travel around Rajasthan with a car and driver, particularly at this time of year as the trains are less reliable due to fog. We had cancelled a train and booked the car because we had been keeping an eye on the train we were due to catch and it had been regularly arriving a number of hours late which meant we were likely to arrive at our destination somewhere in the middle of the night. The car journey was as uneventful as it could be on Indian roads and we arrived at the small Kurja Resort (Kurja means crane in Hindi) in time for lunch. Yet again, we appeared to be the only people staying there for the 2 nights we were there though there was a rumour of a French family though we never saw them. It did mean that we got a lot of attention from the manager and after lunch he got one of his staff to drive us to the village to show us where the cranes hung out so we could find it the next day. They dropped us at a lake just outside the village where the cranes had gathered after their feed in the morning....there were thousands of them and the noise of them chattering, krrrk, krrk, krrrk, was constant. We became the centre of attention for a number of groups of Indians there - some tourists but some from the local big town, Phalodi, and we got the impression that some of them, particularly the teenage boys, actually went there to try to chat to foreign tourists. They were quite persistent in their questions, going beyond the usual what's your name, where are you from, can we take a photo. They even asked what my salary was and wanted to take a photo of me kissing Hugh!

After watching the birds for some time, we left the lake and walked back into the village which has a beautiful collection of old, crumbling havelis or mansions that almost seemed to be a ghost town apart from the odd cow and child. It's not clear why there were so many great houses built there or why many of them now seem to be abandoned. From there we set off to walk back to the resort across an open piece of scrubby land on which a game of cricket was being played. H was quite impressed by the standard and we stopped to watch for a while. We should have known better because soon we were surrounded by a gang of boys asking questions and wanting photos, including the main batsman who had just handed the bat to someone else to come and talk to us.

The room we had at the resort was large and comfortable but obviously designed to keep out the heat meaning that at this time of year it was absolutely freezing! They'd given us a fan heater but it was largely ineffective in a room that size so we huddled under the blankets after dinner catching up on some admin.

The alarm went at 6.30am the following morning and we listened to see if we could hear the birds. It was pitch black outside and very quiet so we stayed in bed for another half an hour before braving the cold, pulling on some clothes and going out into the gradually brightening morning. The gates of the resort were locked so we had to find a boy with a key first but then we walked out onto the field to the sound of krrking and cranes as far as the eye could see, with groups of them in V formations in the sky coming in and out in all directions. Without getting very close at all we seemed to disturb the nearest group and they all flew off making a real racket. We spent about an hour watching the birds on the plain and watching the sun come up then walked into Khichan and to the house next to the 'feeding ground' where people were gathering on the roof to watch. The local people are Jains rather than Hindu and though there are similarities between the two they are quite distinct. Jains believe in the welfare of every being in the universe and health of the universe itself. As part of these beliefs, the local community began feeding the small number of demoiselle cranes that migrated to the area fro Siberia. At the time there were only a few hundred birds but putting out the feed each day has caused more and more to visit and now they reckon that there are over 20,000 come to the area each year. There weren't quite that many on the feeding ground but there were probably a few thousand and more in the surrounding fields. The noise was incredible! It was amazing to watch them move as a group making patterns. Occasionally there would be a temporary quiet as they all looked up from the seed they were eating and often a group would all take off together and the krrking would build up again. The house we were on belongs to Sevaram Malli Parihar who monitors the cranes and for many years has been looking after injured or sick birds. He's been critical in their conservation, having threatened at one point to go on hunger strike when he realised that many birds were dying when the flew into power lines but he couldn't persuade the power company to cover the bare wires. Through his campaigning they did eventually protect the lines and so the birds. He also managed to get autopsies done on some birds to discover that they had been killed by pesticides. He has worked with local farmers to get them to stop using the chemicals and this has further protected the birds. Sevaram showed us some of the magazine articles that had been written about him along with pictures of him getting conservation awards and the little book in which he daily records the time at which the first birds appear in the sky, the time the first one lands in the feeding ground and the time the last one leaves. He also attempts to count the number of birds. But we had a breakfast to get back to so eventually set off back to the resort.

We'd not had enough of the birds and straight after breakfast we headed back and sat up on the roof for another hour or so as the temperature increased and the birds became more skittish. They started flying off in larger and larger groups and when they took off together you could almost feel the updraft of air as they flew towards us and just over the wire on our side of the feeding ground. Finally we were too hot and said thank you to Severam and headed back again, for lunch and a lazy afternoon in the garden.

But we still hadn't had enough of the birds and so the alarm was set and we got up in the cold to head straight to the feeding ground again the following morning. We arrived about 7.30 and there were no birds on the feeding ground but groups were swooping around over our head. Gradually pigeons dropped in and started pecking at the grain and some of the groups of cranes flew lower and lower, sometimes seeming to cause a bit of mutual scaring with the pigeons flapping off as they came near. But finally, somewhere near 8am, the first crane came in to land. It was alone for some time but the sky was filling with cranes flying low so that we almost felt we had our heads in the middle of them until one by one they dropped in to join the first one. After about 10 it speeded up and within minutes there were a few hundred. Sadly we had a car picking us up to take us back to Jodhpur for a flight so we had to say a final goodbye, dash back for a quick breakfast and jump in the car.

The manager had told us that a group from the BBC were going to be staying a few days later, taking all the rooms in the resort, to film the cranes so you should be able to see another of our locations on the telly at some point!

Hope storm Gertrude doesn't cause too many problems for people at home.

S + H x

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Comments

[Karen]

Birds
Having watched Hitchcock's The Birds I couldn't get that close! Well done you. Really enjoying your blog. Thanks for sharing. Kx