Keoladeo National Park - Bird Sanctuary

Pair of Sarus Cranes and thats the baby on the left.

Wow what a place! So many birds and other creatures too. Quiet too and very beautiful. A conservation project, like many created in England - for shooting of ducks, by the very rich. 4035 or there abouts bagged by some chap from Chelmsford. (Earl of Chelmsford or Lord Chelmsford or something in 1876) That was a few years back. There were problems with keeping the water levels up to provide a year on year sanctuary for migrating birds so very recently water is piped in. Some birds were put off in the dry years - they no longer see Siberian Cranes which is a great disappointment to them but they do see very rare Sarus Cranes. I was lucky enough to see two pairs of these too.

Sarus cranes mate for life and if one of a pair dies so does the other I am reliably told. So this  picture is of a lone crane but be sure its mate is just off camera

I can't tell you how many ducks we saw after a little encouragement I quite got into them! They have quite sensible names like spotted bill duck if they have spotted bills and comb ducks if they have combs on their bills (strange place to carry one I know but thats ducks for you).  Thats a comb duck below, lump on its bill is a comb. A shoveller duck has a bill like a shovel and whistler ducks whistle like traffic police! All amazingly beautiful and in huge numbers on the red algae covered low waters amongst the acacia trees.

 These little fellows are so cute! Little grey owls I believe. My favourite picture!

And then there was the python we saw, above is the first sighting - that day Clare was feeling poorly so I went out by myself into the wilderness. And this is what happens I find a huge python! It was tucked away in a bunch of logs. I returned the following day to the same spot to see if I could see more of the snake in the mid day sunshine and I did. This time Clare was there too. We saw another later that day too, by the road side next to its hole just taking the noon day sun in. We were told that until they had warmed up they were very slow moving, once hot though they could move very fast so we slunk away to find some more ducks.

Check out the size of this baby! Hard to tell from a photo but he was a good 12 ft long. This was taken on day 2 at 11am. Our rickshaw driver had predicted that this would be the best time to see him in his full glory and he was right. He lived in the logs and had been seen a few times by locals. Very exciting to see this beautiful reptile in the wild

The other python - tiny by comparison about an inch across its body, the one above was about 3inches across its body

And then there were the Kingfishers - we saw three types - this one the black and white, obviously

Black and white woodpecker

This one not a wood pecker but our rather lovely Rickshaw driver/guide - who taught himself english - enough to tell us the names of all the ducks anyway and to make sure we saw the pythons.

This one the white breasted woodpecker for reasons obvious from the front

And the common woodpecker which everyone has seen at home so no pictures and it was vewry small and shifty so difficult to photograph.

A trutle about to kill a cormorant apparently according to our guide - I doubt this somehow, it wasn't moving very fast and the cormorants looked quite nonchalant too.

These are storks and are only here for 6 months to breed, they cover the acacia trees  with nests  and I have much better pictures somewhere

More adult storks