The Siberian Crane

The white angels that once graced the marshes of Bharatpur

 During my travels conducting wildlife and cultural tours through India, one of my favourite stops has always been Keoladeo National Park at Bharatpur in Rajasthan. A morning spent birdwatching in its extraordinary wetlands was something I looked forward to.

Keoladeo is one of India's great bird sanctuaries. More than 375 species have been recorded here, an astonishing variety for a relatively small wetland of about 2,873 hectares (about 29 square km). Winter is particularly magical, when its shallow waters and marshes fill with thousands of migratory birds arriving from across the northern Palearctic—ducks, geese, waders, storks, raptors and many other travellers escaping the severe northern winter.

But for those of us who birdwatched in Bharatpur, there was one visitor whose arrival each winter generated an excitement all its own: the Siberian Crane.

In the 1990s we were lucky to view and photograph small groups of these graceful cranes. At the time, I knew that Siberian Cranes were becoming increasingly scarce and that seeing them was a privilege. Little did I know we were witnessing the final chapters of the extraordinary bird. Looking back now, those few photographs have acquired an entirely different poignancy. 

Cranes have fascinated human beings for thousands of years. There are 15 recognised species in the crane family, Gruidae, and India has been particularly fortunate in its association with them. The Sarus Crane, India's resident crane and the world's tallest flying bird, is deeply woven into Indian culture and folklore. Its apparent lifelong devotion to its mate has made it a symbol of love, fidelity and mourning. The krauñca birds witnessed by the sage Valmiki in the opening episode of the Ramayana have traditionally been identified with Sarus Cranes.

India also receives several spectacular migrant cranes in winter, including Common Cranes and Demoiselle Cranes. Their journeys across Central Asia are among the great migrations of the natural world. The Black-necked Crane, meanwhile, connects India and the Himalaya with the high-altitude wetlands of the Tibetan Plateau and Ladakh.

Yet none of these cranes quite captured the imagination like the Siberian Crane.

The Siberian Crane (Leucogeranus leucogeranus) is an elegant bird—a large white crane with black primary feathers, long neck and legs, and a distinctive reddish facial patch. Historically, the species consisted of three major populations: eastern, western and central. The eastern population, which accounts for about 98 percent of the surviving birds, breeds in northeastern Siberia and migrates to wintering grounds in China. The western population traditionally wintered in Iran. The central population followed the Central Asian migration route to winter in India.

Keoladeo was the destination of that central population. Historical records suggest that hundreds of Siberian Cranes once gathered at Bharatpur, with around 200 recorded in the 1960s. But their numbers declined dramatically. The central population dwindled to just a few birds, and by the winter of 2001–02 only a single pair remained at Keoladeo—the last Siberian Cranes known to winter in India. They departed northward in spring and never returned.

So how and why did the Siberian Cranes stop coming to the marshes of Keoladeo?

There was probably no single cause, but a combination of threats along their long migration route. Hunting was a particularly serious problem. The cranes passed through Afghanistan and Pakistan, where hunting at important stopover points is believed to have taken a heavy toll. The loss and degradation of wetlands along the migration route would also have reduced the safe feeding and resting places available to the birds. Habitat deterioration, human disturbance and other pressures, acting together on an already dwindling population, eventually made this extraordinary migration increasingly difficult to sustain.

The disappearance is particularly poignant because cranes have long occupied a special place in the cultures of Asia.

In China, the crane became an emblem of longevity, wisdom and immortality. In Japan, the crane—especially the Red-crowned Crane—is associated with longevity, good fortune and fidelity. The tradition of folding a thousand paper cranes, senbazuru, has made the bird an enduring symbol of hope and peace.

Across the Himalayan world too, cranes have been admired for their grace and remarkable seasonal journeys. For generations, the arrival of the Karyang Kurung (cranes) on their northward spring migration has served as a natural calendar for communities in Nepal, Darjeeling and Sikkim. Their passage traditionally signals that the season has turned and it is time to begin sowing seasonal crops and vegetables such as cucumbers and beans.

Perhaps that is what makes the loss of the Siberian Cranes at Bharatpur so difficult to accept. Their disappearance was not simply the loss of a species from a checklist. It was the breaking of an ancient migratory connection between Siberia and the Indian subcontinent.

We were fortunate to see them in the 1990s. At the time, they were simply one of the many wonderful birds that made a morning at Bharatpur unforgettable. Now, more than three decades later, those photographs have become something more: a personal record of a bird species that vanished from the Indian subcontinent.

The Siberian Cranes were, in my eyes, the white angels of Bharatpur. They came from the distant lands of Siberia, crossed thousands of kilometres and returned faithfully to the same wetlands year after year—until they stopped coming.

And perhaps that is why revisiting Keoladeo today brings with it not only nostalgia, but a profound feeling of loss for the magnificent white angels that once graced the wetlands of Bharatpur. 

BOX

Omid: The Last of the Western Siberian Cranes

The disappearance of Siberian Cranes from Bharatpur was not the end of their story. Far to the north-west, another population was fighting an equally desperate battle for survival.

The western population traditionally migrated between western Siberia and wetlands around the southern Caspian Sea in Iran. By the 1990s, it had been reduced to a single known survivor—a lone male named Omid, meaning “Hope” in Persian.

For years, Omid made the extraordinary journey of almost 5,000 kilometres between Siberia and the wetlands of Fereydunkenar in northern Iran, arriving each autumn and returning north in spring. He once had a mate, a female named Arezoo, meaning “Wish”. She disappeared in 2008 and was believed to have been shot by hunters.

Omid nevertheless continued his solitary migration year after year, becoming a symbol of hope for Iranian birdwatchers and conservationists.

In 2023, conservationists made a remarkable attempt to save the western population. A captive-bred female named Roya, meaning “Dream”, was released in Iran to accompany him. The two set off together for Siberia that March, raising hopes that Omid might finally have a mate and that the ancient migration route could survive.

But Roya could not keep pace with Omid and was later found alone in a valley along the route. Omid disappeared and has not been seen in Iran since March 2023. His fate remains unknown.

If he has died, the western population may now survive only in memory.

With the disappearance of both the western and central populations, the eastern population, which winters in eastern China, is now the only surviving wild population of the magnificent Siberian Cranes.