Birds of Nilgiris

I will keep updating this based on my visits to Coonoor, Ooty and Kotagiri belt. Most of birding is in this region and generally the Nilgiris.

Starting with this round from a family vacation in March, 2020

A blue rock thrush female



A tickell's blue flycatcher from Sim's park



A common Rose-finch female

And the Indian blackbird

There have been many visits to Coonoor and Kotagiri and I am in love with the birdlife and the wildlife there. Here are a few captures.

Continuing on the blackbird theme here are different moods and poses of this Indian beauty:

from our holiday home.

Here is the rare Kashmiri flycatcher which is increasingly an irregular visitor to kotagiri:

The malabar parakeet

The woodpeckers:Brown capped woodpecker and Streak throated woodpwckers (male and female)

The southern hill mayna

The painted bush quail

Nilgiri Laughing thrush

Malabar crested lark

Yellow browed bulbul

Oriental white eye

Cinerous tit

The Black and orange flycatcher

Grey-headed canary flycatcher

Nilgiri wood pigeon

and the one and only Nilgiri Sholakili ( or Nilgiri Blue Robin)

...and some close encounters with Indian sloth bear

and the plentiful  Indian Bison (Gaur)

If you are interested in Nilgiris birdlife feel free to contact Aggal Sir in Kotagiri and he will give a great tour of the endemics

Kingfishers of Bhitarkanika

Last March towards almost the end of the season, I decided to make a dash to Bhitarkanika which was very strongly recommended by my friend Sumit Shaw as a Kingfishers' paradise.

Landed in Bhubaneshwar  in the morning and with the able guidance of Mr. Anupam Dash we reached Bhitarkanika by afternoon and went immediately on a boat ride.

Lo behold and within 5 mins of the ride there were Pied kingfishers waiting on the branches



Very soon I saw my first ever sighting of a brown winged kingfisher...




... followed by a Black capped Kingfisher...



... and a common blue kingfisher to round off the day



I was wondering, what else can be seen over the next 1.5 days especially when we had such a wonderful start.

Bhitarkanika is the second largest Mangrove forest in India (after the Sunderbans) and it has one of world's largest population of salt water crocodiles.






and it has lots of birds 😊

While I have seen white bellied eagle before, I could shoot them for the first time






saw my first Pacific Golden Plover




Common Redshank






Striated heron




and Whimbrels all around


On the ground one could see Hoopoe



Eurasian Collared dove



and around the Forest accommodation where we stayed, we saw spotted Owlets




Oriental Scops owl ( a lifer)






So on day three, we focused on getting good shots of Kingfishers.






including the cleanest shot I have of the collared kingfisher.






But the biggest surprise was the close call we had with the Jungle cat









Bhitarkanika park left a lot of fond memories and it is sad to know that it bore the brunt of Cyclone Fani. Hope it is rebuilt fast and the ecotourism is restored soon.

Birds and mammals of Kanha

It was 3 O clock in the morning and after an exhausting year at work I was super excited to get up and catch my flight to Nagpur.

There were a few reasons to be super excited about. I was visiting a forest after a long time, couldn't wait to catch the fresh air and switch off from what was a very hectic year.  My elder daughter was accompanying me for the program organized by Sudhir to learn photography and kindling her interest in wildlife and I was visiting Kanha after 25 years. I was there as a college kid for couple of days with no luck of tiger sighting but had fond remembrance of the forest.



Picture of a few Dholes and the morning mist from 25 years back.





The trip from Nagpur to Mukki gate was long (close to 6 hours) but very picturesque especially after you cross Bhandara. After a good lunch we did some birding around the Chitvaan Lodge.



with an oriental magpie Robin



a greenish warbler (one of the most fidgety birds to capture)

The next day, in the morning safari we tried to capture the beauty of Kanha against the rising sun.




A barasingha couple (which is endemic to Kanha) greeted us and an Indian scops owl was yet to wake up



and spotted deer were around us as you would expect.

Barasingha or swamp deer is unique in the sense it is twelve tined. (could be 10-20 tines) It used to be spread across India, Pakistan and Bangladesh but is now only northern and central India only. To impress females they put grass in their tines.





Afternoon safari was mostly trying different techniques. A starling pecking a spotted deer



a drongo



a  common green bee-eater



and an Indian rolller



a few reflections...literally...but where was the elusive tiger !!






a serpent eagle taking off



a barking deer ( my daughter called it Miss Eyebrows )



The interdependence or symbiotic relationship that the langur has with chital is unique. Langur watches out for Tiger movement and feeds the deer with fresh leaves from the top. Chital or spotted deer is known for its ability to hear the slightest noise and alerts the langur of any predators.




a few experiments with rim light photography and the day ended. Where was the elusive tigress?



Early morning next day an Indian grey Jackal tending its young one...


and then there was news that a tigress has been spotted somewhere near....


and lo behold it was just behind us







It was busy marking its territory while we were snapping.

Later in the evening a chance sighting of the Pin tailed snipe.




and a nose- digger Indian Bison.





Kanha leaves you with a lot of memories and even after 25 years I was so energized by the forest its habitat and the surroundings. No doubt Rudyard Kipling wrote Junglebook based on these forest range.