The Hindu : National : Avian tourists land in Rajasthan

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Sunday, Jan 07, 2007
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Avian tourists land in Rajasthan

Sunny Sebastian

KEECHAN (JODHPUR): Demoiselle cranes are on their annual winter sojourn in Rajasthan. The quaint cranes, referred to as Kurjas locally and in the love songs of the Thar desert, have flocked in large numbers to Keechan, a small town 153 km from Jodhpur in Phalodi tehsil where they have been arriving without fail for many years.

This time the wait had been rather long for the 5,000-odd residents of the town, who take pride in the arrival of huge numbers of the birds to their area, and provide them with daily offering of "chugga" (grains scattered to birds).

Phalodi is one of the coldest places in the plains in the country and the sudden fall in the temperature has seemingly done the trick.

The slate-coloured birds, with their characteristic female-like gait and a protruding feather almost looking like a necktie, are all over the sandy terrains of the town. The birds, which normally start arriving in western Rajasthan by August-September from Central Asia and East Asia, prefer to feed themselves in the fields initially. A local resident, Chetan Ram, informed that on an average 8 quintals of grains are scattered daily to Kurjas. Businessmen from Keechan who have made it big in Chennai, Mumbai, Tiruchi and Raipur finance the bird feed with great fervour.

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