Bar-headed Geese
Anser indicus
Little Rann of Kutch & Bhigwan Bird Sanctuary
While we were watching the Ruddy Shelduck we also spotted a gaggle of geese - the Bar-headed geese. The Ujni backwater wetlands is a shallow waste water reserve formed by the discharge of water from the Pune region dams like Panshet, Pawna, Khadakwasla, Varasgaon, Temghar, etc. This semi waste water has created an excellent wetland based ecosystem supporting a large variety of water birds, both endemic and migratory, and also helped with the local agriculture. Nearly 300 species of endemic and migratory birds have been recorded here. The rainfall in the Pune region decides the water level in Ujni dam. Lesser the water, the shallower it is and therefore more birds make it their home in the winter.
Surrounding this lush ecosystem are the rich grasslands and fertile farms home to an impressive list of birds, mammals and reptiles. The area around these backwaters are also unique with rich farmlands and dry deciduous scrub forest with interspersed grasslands. Home to an impressive list of birds, mammals and reptiles they protect many mammals like the Chinkara, Hyena, Wolf and Indian fox and are also popular for grassland birds and the birds of prey, including the magnificent eagles & harriers I’ve talked about in earlier blogs.
Read about the eagles & harriers of Kumbhargaon:
The endangered Steppe Eagle, vulnerable Greater Spotted Eagle & the rare and also vulnerable Eastern Imperial Eagle.
The beautiful Pallid Harrier, Montagu’s Harrier & Eurasian Marsh Harrier.
There are also other spectacular species like the Short-eared Owl, Spotted Owlets, the Indian Courser inhabiting the grasslands. On our final day we were dedicated to finding the waders and the day started well with the Agnipankha (Greater Flamingo) at dawn, then the Ruddy Shelducks and along with them a gaggle of Bar-headed Geese.
During our time here we were hosted by and had the expert help of Sandip Nagare and his team of knowledgeable guides from the Agnipankha Bird Watcher group, especially Ganesh Bhoi, who went out of their way to ensure we had fantastic opportunities to explore, discover, observe & photograph over 82 species of birds and wildlife including some rare ones. We stayed at Sandip’s homestay of the same name and had the added pleasure of indulging in delectable home cooked food.
I spent a couple of days with great friends - Tirtho, Saugat & Samar - in Kumbhargaon village, the winter home for an immense variety of birds like Grey Herons, Painted Storks, Brown Headed Gulls, River Terns & Little Terns, the Black-headed & Red-naped Ibis, Little Ringed Plover, Osprey and the Peregrine Falcon to name a few.
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Bar-headed Geese
The bar-headed goose (Anser indicus) is a goose that breeds in Central Asia in colonies of thousands near mountain lakes and winters in South Asia, as far south as peninsular India. It lays three to eight eggs at a time in a ground nest. It is known for the extreme altitudes it reaches when migrating across the Himalayas. It is a striking and distinctive goose with a bold black-and-white head and neck pattern unlike any other goose. One can also note its orangey-yellow bill and legs. In flight it appears a pale gray with a broad black trailing edge to its wings. It breeds around lakes and marshes on the highland plateaus of Central Asia and winters in the lowland wetlands and fields of Central and South India. It is native to East and South Asia, but escapees from waterfowl collections are occasionally seen free-flying elsewhere in the world.
The bird is pale grey and is easily distinguished from any of the other grey geese of the genus Anser by the black bars on its head. It is also much paler than the other geese in this genus. In flight, its call is a typical goose honking. A mid-sized goose, it measures 28–30 inches in total length with a wing span of 55-62 inches and weighs 1.87–3.2 kg. Their summer habitat are high-altitude lakes where the bird grazes on short grass. The species has been reported as migrating south from Tibet, Kazakhstan, Mongolia and Russia before crossing the Himalayas. It suffers predation from crows, foxes, ravens, sea eagles, gulls and others. The total population may, however, be increasing, but it is complex to assess population trends, as this species occurs over a huge range of more than 2,500,000 km2 (970,000 sq mi).
They are one of the world's highest-flying birds, having been heard flying across Mount Makalu – the fifth highest mountain on earth at 8,481 m (27,825 ft) – and apparently seen over Mount Everest – 8,848 m (29,029 ft) – although this is a second-hand report and not verified. This demanding migration has long puzzled physiologists and naturalists: "there must be a good explanation for why the birds fly to the extreme altitudes particularly since there are passes through the Himalaya at lower altitudes, and which are used by other migrating bird species." In fact, bar-headed geese had for a long time not been directly tracked (using GPS or satellite logging technology) flying higher than 6,540 metres (21,460 ft), and it is now believed that they do take the high passes through the mountains. The challenging northward migration from lowland India to breed in the summer on the Tibetan Plateau is undertaken in stages, with the flight across the Himalaya (from sea-level) being undertaken non-stop in as little as seven hours. Surprisingly, despite predictable tail winds that blow up the Himalayas (in the same direction of travel as the geese), bar-headed geese spurn these winds, waiting for them to die down overnight, when they then undertake the greatest rates of climbing flight ever recorded for a bird, and sustain these climbs rates for hours on end, according to research published in 2011.
Since early mountaineers and naturalists first sighted bar-headed geese migrating amidst the Himalayan mountains, the migration of this species has been a fascination to both scientists and the general public. As the most metabolically intense form of vertebrate locomotion, flight demands an extremely high rate of oxygen consumption, yet the air at high altitudes in the Himalayas contains only one-third to one-half of the oxygen that is available in air at sea level. Therein lies the apparent paradox that has intrigued so many scientists: bar-headed geese must be capable of sustaining the high oxygen demands of flight in air that is exceedingly oxygen-thin. What is the evidence that bar-headed geese can in fact accomplish this paradoxical feat? What physiological mechanisms underlie high-altitude flight? Recent efforts to address these questions, from characterising the physiological ecology of the natural migration to elucidating the unique respiratory and metabolic physiology that underlies it, are shedding new insight into the paradox of high-altitude flight in this species.
Bar-headed geese can reach high altitudes during their migration across the Himalayas and Tibetan plateau because they can continue supporting the metabolic costs of flight as the air becomes extremely hypoxic. Like other migrating birds, they may occasionally make use of updraft wind assistance to help offset flight costs. However, they also experience periods of intense flapping flight that require extremely high heart rates, wing-beat frequencies, and metabolic power, such as during level flight at high elevation or during climbs that are not assisted by wind. Physiological specialisations have evolved at all steps in the O2 cascade of bar-headed geese that help them accomplish this feat by improving O2 transport in hypoxia. However, most of what is known about the physiology of bar-headed geese comes from comparing this species to lowland birds in a common environment at sea level. It is likely that the evolved specialisations that have already been discovered do not entirely explain high-altitude flight. For example, we know much more about how bar-headed geese cope with hypoxia than how they deal with low barometric pressure, cold, and dry air at high altitudes. We also know relatively little about the influence of phenotypic plasticity (i.e., acclimatisation) and developmental plasticity on the physiology of this species. We therefore have much yet to learn about the migration of this fascinating species, which will undoubtedly continue to shed light on nature's impressive solutions to oxygen deprivation.
This is sourced from the article - “How Bar-Headed Geese Fly Over the Himalayas” by Graham R. Scott, Lucy A. Hawkes, Peter B. Frappell, Patrick J. Butler, Charles M. Bishop, and William K. Milsom.
The bar-headed goose has been suggested as being the model for the Hamsa of Indian mythology. Another interpretation suggests that the bar-headed goose is likely to be the Kadamb in ancient and medieval Sanskrit literature, whereas Hamsa generally refers to the swan.
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I had the good fortune to observe these beautiful Bar-headed geese at the Little Rann of Kutch and have them at the beginning of the photo gallery below. They were photographed late January, 2018.
The remaining are the photos and a video from the Ujni backwaters. The photographs are from different spots in more or less the same general area with the light playing games as with the Ruddy Shelducks.
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Bar-headed Geese ~ Little Rann of Kutch
Photographed on January 22, 2018
Bar-headed Geese ~ Ujni Backwaters, Bhigwan Bird Sanctuary
Photographed on February 13, 2021
The following photos were taken as we gradually rowed closer to the geese to a point where the bird wasn’t just frame filling but as it stretched its neck it went out of the frame. This was also when the bird decided to flap its wings going completely out of frame :). One of those rare times when you get too close to the bird.
Imagine, if you were to climb Chomolungma, or Mount Everest as it is better known, you just might see a Bar-headed Goose or two flying overhead.
They are the world’s highest flying migratory birds flying at an extreme altitude over the Himalayas, where there is less than 10% the oxygen found at sea level. They have found a way to cross the world's longest and highest land mass - over 1,500km [930 miles] - an almost impossible physiological feat relatively easily.
These geese may represent "the limit" of what birds are capable of and they don't train or acclimatise. They could walk on the top of Everest and have no problem at all.
The following footage was recorded on 13th February on the Ujni backwaters of the Bhigwan Bird Sanctuary. We were riding the waves when we spotted the Ruddy Shelducks and the Bar-headed geese. The wind was not being supportive at all and although the stills were possible the video was a very different story. Thankfully we were able to approach the birds gradually and were able to observe them in close proximity.
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