Samaguri Beel

Samaguri Beel is a U-shaped oxbow lake close to Nagaon town in Assam, left behind when the Kolong River abandoned an old bend in the Brahmaputra basin. Locally it is called Pokhi Tirtha, Assamese for a pilgrimage place of birds, because migrants use it as a stopover through the winter.

Winter visitors include lesser and fulvous whistling ducks, ferruginous pochards, whiskered terns, cotton pygmy geese, cinnamon bitterns and grey-headed lapwings. Resident species include bronze-winged jacanas, pond herons, oriental darters, egrets, kingfishers, swamphens, moorhens, little cormorants, Asian openbills and ospreys.