Sarus crane: the tallest flying bird, in India's wet fields

The body and wings are grey, the crown greyish, and the bare skin of the head and upper neck bright red, brightest in the breeding season, with a grey patch over the ear. The bill is long, pointed and greenish-grey, the legs pink, the eye orange-red. In flight the neck is held straight out (a heron folds it back), the black wingtips show and the long legs trail behind. Young birds have a feathered brownish-grey head.

Northern Indian birds are among the heaviest cranes anywhere: birds of the Indian race weigh 6.8–7.8 kg, and across the species' range the wingspan is 2.2–2.5 m. Males and females look alike; males are a little larger.

The call you will hear first is the duet: a pair stands side by side, throws back their heads and trumpets in unison, at a territory border, when they swap places on the nest, or when another sarus flies over.

The sarus once ranged across India's lowlands, along the Ganga plains south to the Godavari, west to coastal Gujarat and east to Assam. It no longer breeds in Punjab (it only winters there), has gone from Bihar and is rare in West Bengal and Assam. Uttar Pradesh is the exception: small farms, flooded paddy, a dense web of canals and farmers who tolerate the birds have kept the country's largest population there.

Braj sits at the western edge of that range, with resident pairs that hold the same ponds and wet plots year after year. The database's best site is Jodhpur Jhal, a wetland in the Vrindavan area where sarus are recorded through the year and are among the most-reported birds; in Braj they are easiest to see from November to March. Around Govardhan pairs feed in the wet fields by Kusum Sarovar, and near Mathura at Pavan Sarovar in the cool months. The database also lists Keoladeo National Park at Bharatpur and Sur Sarovar (Keetham Lake) near Agra.

Pairs breed in the wet season, building a nest island of reeds and grass nearly two metres across in shallow water. Watch from a road or bund and keep well back from any pair standing guard.

By tradition the epic poem of Rama starts with a crane. The sage Valmiki saw a hunter kill one of a pair of birds, heard the grief of the surviving mate and cursed the hunter; his words, the story goes, came out as the first Sanskrit verse, and that moment set him to compose the Ramayana. The bird of that story is commonly identified with the sarus.

The idea of the inseparable pair runs through village belief: sarus are thought to mate for life, and a widowed bird is said to pine and even starve. In parts of Gujarat newlyweds are taken to see a pair of sarus. Among the Gond, the clans of “five-god worshippers” hold the bird sacred, and ancient Hindu texts treated its meat as taboo. The bird came close to being chosen as India's national bird, and Uttar Pradesh adopted it as its state bird.

The sarus crane is classed as Vulnerable on the IUCN Red List: wetlands are drained and degraded, birds are hunted and eggs collected in places, and pollution adds to the losses. In India it has the highest level of legal protection, Schedule I of the Wild Life (Protection) Act as amended in 2022. Uttar Pradesh's forest department counts the birds twice a year with volunteers.