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Northern pintail
सींखपर (seenkhpar)
A slender, long-necked duck whose drake carries a chocolate head, a white stripe up the neck and two long central tail feathers.
How to recognise it
The outline is the mark: no other Indian duck looks that elongated. Pintails feed by upending in shallow water and leave in huge flocks at dawn.
Where to see it
Agra
Keoladeo has little deep water, which suits dabbling ducks: pintail, shoveler and teal are the most numerous ducks there in winter, while diving ducks stay comparatively few.
Keoladeo Ghana National Park (Bharatpur) · Sur Sarovar Bird Sanctuary (Keetham Lake)
Chandigarh
To give pintails and other waterfowl somewhere to rest when Sukhna's water stands too high for mudflats, the UT forest department floated bamboo islands on the lake: a trial raft in 2019, six islands by 2021.
Sukhna Lake (in season) · Siswan Dam and Community Reserve (in season)
Dehradun
When Asan became Uttarakhand's first Ramsar site in 2020, the northern pintail was one of the ducks named in the listing as relying on the wetland for wintering and rest on migration.
Asan Conservation Reserve (Asan Barrage)
Mayapur
At Chupi Char pintails keep to the open water with the other migrant ducks; surveys in 2019–2022 found the migrants arriving in early December and mostly gone by the end of February.
Chupi Char, Purbasthali (in season)
Pune
Pashan Lake was built by the British in 1867–68 to supply the Kirkee gunpowder works; today it is one of the places inside the city where pintails spend the winter.
Pashan Lake (in season) · Khadakwasla Dam (in season)