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From Rajasthan’s quiet village ponds to Bengal’s untouched oxbow lake, these lesser-known bird habitats are thriving—far from the crowds, and closer to nature than ever

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.

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.