(Featured image courtesy Northeast News)

“Tukura sorai dekha?”

“Have you seen Tukura sorai?”

Ask around Assam, and birdwatchers might just light up. That’s the Finn’s Weaver, a brilliant yellow weaver bird whose presence signals something remarkable: healthy, thriving grasslands.

And that’s exactly what researchers found in Kaziranga National Park and Tiger Reserve (KNPTR) during the first-ever grassland bird census that talks about the hidden world of rare and endangered birds quietly thriving in the shadows of tall elephant grass.

43 Grassland bird species and counting

Between 18 March 2025 and 25 May 2025, wildlife researchers surveyed 185 grassland sites across Kaziranga, a UNESCO World Heritage Site. The result?

• 43 species of grassland birds
  
• One critically endangered, two endangered, six vulnerable, and one near-threatened species were recorded
  
• A breeding colony of Finn’s Weaver, one of India’s most elusive endangered birds
  

“This puts Kaziranga among the protected areas with the highest diversity of grassland birds in India,” said Sonali Ghosh, Director of KNPTR, in a statement to Deccan Herald.

What makes grassland birds so special?

Grassland birds are specialists. They thrive only in open, grassy ecosystems such as tall wet grasslands, scrub fields, and marshes. These birds are ecological indicators, and their presence shows that an........

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