Discover Unheard Wetlands That Are Quietly Becoming India’s Best Birding Spots

In mid-March, a school teacher in the village of Menar, 50 kilometres east of Udaipur, was out with his binoculars near Dhand Talab, a birdwatching habitat. As a local resource for conducting the Asian Water Bird Survey, annually held across wetlands and known migration sites, Darshan Menaria has come to find a voice for his village, and its extraordinary efforts to protect the rich waterbodies hidden within the Aravallis, just outside the city of lakes. Menar was already known as a bird village for years, but the latest recognition came in June 2025, with the prestigious tag of being a ‘Ramsar Site’. Menaria had submitted a proposal to include Kheroda in the Ramsar site proposal, “so that the bird census extends there too. Maximum birds are moving between Menar and Kheroda, they're connected habitats,” he says. It's not a vast delta or a protected forest, but two monsoon-fed village ponds in the semi-arid Mewar plateau of Rajasthan.

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Lesser whistling ducks in motion

The Ramsar designation, named for the 1971 treaty signed in Iran, is awarded to wetlands of international importance - for biodiversity, ecological function, and the sustenance of human communities. India now has over 98 such sites. Many of them are just as surprising as Menar.

Look beyond the famous

The choice of top wetland for bird photography will get you answers that rarely change. Keoladeo in Bharatpur, Chilika in Odisha, Sultanpur outside Agra, Thane Creek for Flamingos — all magnificent places, but are also crowded, well-studied, and increasingly strained by the weight of their own popularity. The bird watcher, who seeks the silence of water, must look elsewhere.

Purple heron at Brahma talab Menar

“I found Menar by choice”, exclaims Joydeep Mondal, an architect and wildlife photographer. Bheru, a staff member at the nearby Chunda Shikar Oudi hails from Kichan, another village nearby introduced him to the place. “Past the signboard for ‘Pakshi Mitra Bird Village’, a day of exploration with the former WWF India volunteer revealed an incredible habitat where common and sarus cranes appear in December, northern pintails do mating dance on water amid thousands of other species, and vultures gather on the fringes of the village carcass ground in great numbers. It seemed well protected, but also untouched, which may change if too many visitors started coming in. My hosts consciously recommended it only after I asked,” he informed.

Common cranes at Kheroda

The local people have been preserving and conserving these ponds for many years, Menaria told FPJ. “Open defecation near the ponds was completely banned, and anyone found doing it was punished. The villagers never thought of tourism as a source of income. Otherwise, with such large ponds, they could have put boats in long ago,” he highlighted.

Oxbow Lake in Bengal

Two thousand kilometres east, another unlikely paradise sits in West Bengal. Purbasthali's “Chupi Char”, a horseshoe-shaped oxbow lake formed by the meandering Bhagirathi river has no guided tour packages for birders. What it has is a fine ecosystem.

Egyptian Vulture in Kheroda

“Barely 120 kilometres from Kolkata, Chupi Char is often a revelation to friends I have taken there”, says Sabyasachi Nath, Founder of Photographers Club of India. “My boatman Haru, wears a thin cotton shirt and a lungi, and knows birds by their silhouette. I often spend hours on the water, watching the flamboyant display of red-crested pochards, trying to win over the females. Purple swamphens walk across lily pads with impossible delicacy, flocks of Lesser whistling ducks lift off the far shore like a cloud. If patient, you can witness aerial warfare between ospreys and kites to snatch hard earned fish catches. Sometimes, the sushuk (Gangetic river dolphin) would pop out by the side of our dingy boat, upriver,” he says.

What apps do for wetlands

The transformation of birdwatching in India over the last decade is largely due to two mobile apps, eBird and Merlin, both from Cornell Lab. eBird has given India a citizen-science infrastructure that BNHS calls transformative. Checklists submitted by every amateur birder in the country feeds a live database tracking population trends across flyways. Media uploads to eBird enable Merlin Sound ID to recognise more than 1,000 bird species found across India, a staggering figure built on volunteer contributions.

Menar Lake In November

However, what the apps cannot replicate is local knowledge. The best birding passes through human hands, that includes the Pakshi Mitras, the boatmen, the retired forest officers who know the back routes. Technology may find the bird, but locals find the story.

Wetlands Worth A Detour

• Nandur Madhmeshwar, Maharashtra — 100 kms north of Nashik; Maharashtra's only Ramsar site and a largely uncrowded secret.

• Kabar Taal (Kanwar Lake), Bihar — Asia's largest freshwater oxbow lake, rarely visited despite extraordinary waterfowl numbers.

• Nal Sarovar, Gujarat — 60 kms from Ahmedabad; undervisited outside flamingo season.

• Loktak Lake, Manipur — India's largest freshwater lake; floating phumdis (biomass islands) host extraordinary endemics.

• Ankasamudra, Karnataka - Ramsar site near Hampi; 35,000 waterbirds nest among half-submerged acacia trees in an ancient irrigation tank.

Catch a lover

Birding Events

All April

eBird India April Challenge

Upload 30+ complete checklists (min. 15 min, all species counted) by 10th May. Include an audio recording for a bonus draw. Log at ebird.org/india or via the eBird app. Results announced mid-May.

April 22

World Earth Day Birding Walks

BNHS, WWF India, and local naturalist groups across Mumbai, Pune, Delhi, Bengaluru, and Kolkata organise community bird walks on Earth Day. Check individual chapter pages for locations.

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