Location: Bharatpur, Rajasthan.
Coverage Area : 232 sq. Kms.
Main Attractions: Spoon Bills
Best Time To Visit : The Keoladeo National Park is open throughout the year. August-October is the breeding season, so the birds are best left alone then. The best season for visiting this place is between October to February when the migratory birds come to visit this park from all over the globe.

Keoladeo Ghana National Park is one of the most spectacular bird sanctuaries in India, nesting indigenous water-birds as well as migratory water-birds and waterside birds. It is also inhabited by sambar, chital, nilgai and boar. More than 300 species of birds are found in this small park of 29 sq. km., of which 11 sq. km. are marshes while the rest is scrubland and grassland. Keoladeo is a name derived from an ancient Hindu temple devoted to Lord Shiva, which stands at the centre of the park. 'Ghana' means dense, referring to the thick forest which used to cover the area. While many of India's parks have been developed from the hunting preserves of princely India, Keoladeo Ghana is perhaps the only case where the habitat has been created by a Maharaja. In earlier times, Bharatpur town used to be flooded regularly every monsoon. In 1760, an earthen dam (Ajan Dam) was constructed to save the town from this annual vagary of nature. The depression created by extraction of soil for the dam was cleared and this became the Keoladeo lake. At the beginning of this century, this lake was developed and divided into several portions, while a system of small dams, dykes and sluice gates was created to control water levels in different sections. This became the hunting preserve of the Bharatpur royalty, and one of the best duck-shooting wetlands in the world. Hunting became prohibited in the mid-1960s, and the area was declared a national park on 10 March 1982. It is now a World Heritage Site.

Fauna :

Over 350 species of birds find refuge in the shallow lakes and woodland. A third of them are migrants, many of whom spend their winters in Bharatpur before returning to their breeding grounds as far away as Siberia and Central Asia. Migratory birds at Keoladeo include the massive Dalmatian Pelican, which is slightly less than two meters tall, and the tiny Siberian Disky Leaf Warbler, which is the size of a finger.
Other migrants include species of cranes, pelicans, geese, ducks, eagles, hawks, shanks, stints, wagtails, warblers, wheatears, flycatchers, buntings, larks and pipits. The Siberian Crane or the great white crane, which migrates to this site every year, flies an impressive distance 6 400 kms, more than halfway around the world, in order to do so. These birds, numbering only a few hundred, are on the verge of extinction, and there are only two wintering places left where the Siberian Crane can now be found: in Feredunkenar in Iran, and here at Keoladeo Ghana, and between December and March. Unlike Indian cranes, the Siberian Crane is entirely vegetarian, and feeds on underground aquatic roots and tubers in loose flocks of five or six.