Place · crane wintering village · India
Khichan
Also known as Khichan, Kheechan, demoiselle crane, kurja
A Marwari village near Phalodi where some twenty thousand demoiselle cranes winter each year, fed by the villagers on grain from a walled feeding ground that the community pays for. The birds fly in from Mongolia and Central Asia over the Himalaya, which is the highest migration of any bird.
- Function
- Landscape & environmental change
- Confidence
- Established / referenced
- Location
- 27.130, 72.960
Worth knowing
It began in the 1970s with one couple scattering grain for a few dozen birds, and the village now buys many tonnes of it a season. The Jain and Bishnoi prohibition on harming animals is what makes the arrangement work, and Khichan is the clearest case in India of a wildlife spectacle created deliberately by a village's own money.
Connections (1)
- AnalogueKhejarli
Khejarli in 1730 and Khichan since the 1970s are the same idea two and a half centuries apart: a desert community bearing a cost to protect something living. Three hundred and sixty-three Bishnoi are said to have died for khejri trees at one; the other buys tonnes of grain a year for twenty thousand cranes that fly in over the Himalaya. The Chipko movement cited Khejarli directly.
On these journeys
Sources
Wikipedia, “Khichan”. Bombay Natural History Society reports on the Khichan demoiselle crane congregation; Rajasthan Forest Department records.
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