Birding Diaries– A pied kingfisher looking for its dinner

Somewhere on the way between Tranquebar and Karaikal, late one evening, I found this pied kingfisher looking for dinner in some thorny bushes. The colours had anyways faded and hence, I chose to post it as a black and white version..I like the black and white better..what do you think ?

Travel Tuesday– Go bird watching- Black headed ibis

Drive barely a few kms out of Bangalore and sights like these are very familiar. Here is a flock of black headed ibis foraging for food in the paddy fields

Birding in Hebbal Lake, Bangalore watching pelicans

I was in Hebbal Lake in Bangalore, watching pelicans with some friends. I shot a couple of videos when we saw these beautiful birds in the waters. A friend explains the different kinds of pelicans while you watch them flying

Birding in Hebbal–Pelicans in flight

Pelicans in Hebbal Lake, Bangalore

Birding in Ganeshgudi–the many shades of blue

In Ganeshgudi, you see many shades of blue when you go birdwatching. The Tickell’s Blue and the white bellied flycatchers, the verditer , the monarch, the malabar whistling thrush, the asian fairy blue bird and the blue capped rock thrush show off their plumage as you gaze at them lovingly through your lens. Here are some birds that make you go blue in your face…

Asian Fairy Blue Bird above and the Blue capped rock thrush below


The verditer above and the malabar whistling thrush below


Tickell’s blue above and the white bellied flycatcher below

The monarch

Birding diaries - Crested serpent eagle in KMTR

I was driving through parts of Kalakadu Mudanthurai Wildlife Reserve in Tirunelveli last January. Located very close to my native village, Kallidaikurichi, this is one wildlife reserve that I would like to revisit again. We did not see much wildlife, but we managed to spot this crested serpent eagle there

And the eye of the eagle, although I wish that little green spot vanishes

The story of a crested serpent eagle and the indian roller in Kabini

Was rummaging through my hard disk this morning and I found myself looking at a trip I had made with my parents three years ago to Kabini. Found this photograph of the crested serpent eagle.

The indian roller and the black drongo would not let it perch quietly though and they chased the raptor away.

Ironically I made three trips to Kabini that year and now, I havent been there for three years..Note to self - Go in 2012.

Birding in Masinagudi

I was in Masinagudi a few days ago and went on a birding trip with Atul, the manager of Club Mahindra Zest property - Casa Deep Woods. My first visit to Casa was almost a decade ago, when it was not a Club Mahindra property .Incidentally it was my first ever trip to Masinagudi. It was sheer serendipity as we drove towards Mudhumalai forest after being told that we had no accommodation in Bandipur. The property was very new and Masinagudi was still very much not a tourist destination. I have visited Masinagudi several times, but this trip was sheer nostalgia.

And what a birding haven it turned out to be -the iora, the sunbird, the white eye, the warbler, the flycatchers, the thrushes - we sighted almost 50 species of birds in just one session and the best sightings were that of the pitta and the paradise flycatcher .While the pitta was hanging around for more than half an hour, walking around the dry stream , barely a few feet from me and at eye level, the paradise fly catchers were rather elusive. An entire family was high up in the leaves , right above us and we watched them fly with our binoculars.

The pitta chased the orange headed ground thrush that landed finally up in the branches of the trees.

My favourite of course was the poser tickell's blue flycatcher. For more birds and photographs, do see my album on my travel page on Facebook. For the entire story, please read here

The spotted owlet that wishes me good morning

I have been lazy most of last year, but this year,  I have been pushing myself to wake up and head out for walks in the morning. And the motivation is a spotted owlet that greets me with a scowl whenever I chance upon it on my early walks. The owlet and I are half asleep but we spend a few moments gazing at each other, it looks down at me and makes a face and I grin at it.

On my birthday however, I took a few photographs of the bird and I found out there were two of them , probably nesting in that little hollow of theirs. Only one posed for me, that too rather reluctantly, while the other flew away.

I decided not to disturb them again by taking pictures, but we still greet each other every morning .

I saw it today as well on my morning walk and it did come out and sun itself on the branch for a while before disappearing into its home

So where would you like to be this Monday ?

Looking for Flamingos  in Pulicat Lake maybe ? You can see the entire album of flamingos here on my Facebook 

Birding in Goa - Meet the state bird of Goa

As an amateur birder, I enjoy sighting variety of birds and listening to their calls . I do learn to id them, but sometimes just watching  their behaviour is enough to make me lose sense of time . I am no bird photographer nor am I am expert, but my travels have taken me to several birding destinations like this trip to South Goa, which is where I saw this beautiful bird.

Meet the state bird of Goa - the ruby throated bulbul - just loved this bird !See it again if you like..I took this picture in Bhagavan Mahaveer Wildlife Sanctuary

Check out the red throat here.

Ive just signed up for Project 365 and one needs to post a picture a day - however I will alternate between posts and pictures..

Birding in Cochin

Ok..its the birding season and everyone has flown to exotic destinations to look for exotic birds. Well, I am an exception..not that I dont want to do birding, but my compass currently points towards home. However, during my recent trip to Cochin, I didnt do much birding, but we did spot a lot of water birds and a few woodland birds. The malabar whistling thrush was singing away, while I spotted the black headed oriole , pied wagtail, black drongos . I went looking for horn bills near Athirampally Falls, but I guess they flew away to avoid the crowds. Here are some pictures of some of the more common birds - a cormorant here, which the locals refer to as " neer kaka" or the " water crows", a pair of white breasted kingfishers, which had their breakfast while I had mine, a pond heron and a coucal which landed right in front of my room window.

I'm just a bird in the sky ..

And no one can take my freedom away..so sing the river terns over the Bhadra backwaters in Lakkavalli where they come to breed every year

Here are a pair of cormorants singing the same song as they return home. To see more fascinating skies across the world, click here

Birding over the weekend - Getting there !

Ive been birding over the last few months and Ive enjoyed looking at them, learning to identify them, listening to their calls and also observing them. I was initiated into birding thanks to NTP (Naturalist Training Programme )conducted by Jungle Lodges and also some friends who guided me and even helped me picked up a binocs ..There was a time when every weekend I used to wake up early and go for birding and then there was a long hiatus. Finally, I went birding again yesterday and for the first time tried my hand into photographing birds. Shreeram,a friend , photographer and blogger lent me his lens and this is one of my favourite shots from yesterday's birding. An egret landing at TG Halli.

Nature calls..

There are some moments in life when you realize that the most simple things in life are the ones that we ignore the most, take them for granted and assume that they are always there..



They also happen to be the finer things in life which we cannot do without - the birds, the bees, the trees, the flowers, the deer, the ants, the spiders,the grass, the thicket and before I say like Keats "and the fruit tree wild..", let me tell you that my vain attempt at poetic prose is inspired by the 3 days spent in a Naturalist Training Programme organised by Jungle Lodges.



I went bird watching for the first time and it was amazing to wake up to an orchestra every morning. We spotted close to 20 species and some of them stay quite fresh in my mind. The special moments were the sighting of the Tickell's Blue flycatcher and the paradise fly catcher, the purple sunbird,the small minivet,the golden oriole,the Eurasian eagle owl, the red wattled lapwing and the blue bearded bee eater. However, it wasnt just them.


It was about realizing that all nests may not belong to birds, but could be that of a social spider .It was also about looking at the differences between the red vented bulbul and the red whiskered bulbul,the magpie robin and the Indian robin,the spotted dove and the laughing dove, listening to the call of the puff throated babbler, the sighting of the coppersmith , the sillhouttes of the wing patterns of the swift and the swallow in flight,the eye of the oriental white eye,the brown cap of the pygmy woodpecker and the white browed fantail. The colours are still so vivid in my mind and I realized that just watching these birds and their behaviour can be so addictive . I wondered what really took me so long to get to the world of birds.


But its not just the thrill of seeing and discovering birds..its also about discovering the world around you that makes you alive and gives you an identity.Its also about telling you that there could be a world soon when all these will slowly die or disappear as their habitat gets taken over by man.Its also about discovering that for every species of plant lost, we lose 30 species of organisms. There is drama,tension, mystery, colour and wonder in this world which we often miss. Unfortunately there is also death and decay here which we are indifferent to.

On a different note. Some quick updates here...
This blog has been selected as the featured blog in Best Indian Blogs and Im quite kicked about this..Thanks guys for reading my blog and making this happen. Im off to a new destination day after, a hill station ,a fort and a forest rolled into one..Any guesses ? You can look for answers in Cerebrate . Ive been missing out on all your posts and will catch up when I am back next week.

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