Rare migratory bird spotted after 113 years in Himachal

"Whooper Swans have been spotted in the Beas river basin of Himachal after a gap of 113 years," said Devinder Singh Dhadwal, an Assistant Conservator of Forests in Dharamsala.

Dhadwal, also an ornithologist, photographed a pair of them at the Pong lake on Tuesday.

Whooper Swans, which come from Central Asia and Europe and are rare migrants to India, were last spotted in the country in 1900 near river Beas by British civil servant E H Aitken, Dhadwal said.

The Whooper Swans were earlier recorded in the notes of A O Hume's book 'Swans of India' in 1878.

Whooper Swan, national bird of Finland and features on the Finnish 1 Euro coin, is one of the heaviest flying birds with an average body weight of 9.8