Wayanad

Posted by Nbhat |0 comments

Wanted to blog about the trip for a long time... Never managed to do so and its almost 6 months now. It was another event full trip with the duo Prem and Som .. Visited Muthunga, Soochipara falls, Edakkal caves and Kuruva islands
High points -

• Managed to get home stay quite close to the Muthunga wild life sanctuary. As the cottages were booked or ventured to stay in tree house. It was an experience. Rest room was on the ground and bed room on the tree and bucket and a pulley to take our paraphernalia to the top.
  

  It took nearly an hour and lot of adjustments to take this snap without flash in the moon light.

  
  
• Food at the home stay was simple and tasty. Taught the cook how to make pea-nut masala
• We enjoyed the drive to Soochipara falls on winding roads through scenic Harrison tea estate, though we were getting restless due to the ever changing directions given by locals.
  

  From Wayanad

  
  
• Thankfully the security guy at the Edkkal caves explained the stone carvings/painitings or whatever you call. Who is the king, queen etc.
• Kuruva island is great place for birding - prize sighting was the racket tailed drongo. Others bird watchers had found 3-4 Black Baza. Its serene, calm and not that commercialized.

Low points

• Biggest disappointment was the wildlife safari. We had asked Jeep guy to come at 6:00 clock to take us to the sanctuary. By the time he arrived it was 7:00 and by the time we went inside it was already 7:30 and every one had gone to their hidings. We did not even sight one Cheetal. Only wildlife we could see was Adjoint Stork and elephant from far away.
• Getting directions turned out be very difficult due to language barriers. Even when we managed to convey we got different answers from every individual answered. Adding to the confusion were the milestones side by side showing different distances! At some stretch there were 3 sets of milestones with its own distance. I guess its real democracy out there. 1 meter might be 100 cm for some and 90 cm for other.
• We could not visit the Chembra peak which is supposed to give very scenic view.

Here is the link to the notes I collected before the trip about Wayanad

Wayanad

Learning to Fly - Birding at Lalbagh

Posted by Nbhat |2 comments

I was on the bng birder yahoo group for quite some time and for a long time, I wanted to go for second Sunday birding at Lalbagh . When I reached the west side of the glass house around 7:30 AM on Sunday morning, JN Prasad(He has been doing bird watching at Lalbagh for nearly 30 years now and is regularly guides people on second Sunday outings) was just arriving with his birding scope. After brief introduction we started off. There were easily 20+ people. It was good to see lot of children joining. When I came to know that there were people from as far as Basweshwar Nagar had made it early in the morning,thought being in Koramangal I could have gone earlier :(
First bird of first bird watching session was Shikra(Also known as Black Kite) which was spotted by its voice and because of the crows chasing it. Most of the people were new to birding, so each bird finding followed description of the bird, how to identify and some interesting facts such as How Koel brings up its siblings? To start with spotting was not easy especially when you are moving from bare eyes to binoculars. But slowly I got the hang of it and started spotting too.
We had Nisarg joing and explaining about his water-hole study at Bandipur. Nisarg sets up trap camers and he is supposed to study the water hole usage pattern in bandipur. Then M.B.Krishna(you know who if you are on the bangalore birder list) explained the story behind the poster on oxygen calculations It was developed on a bill left behind by the prevoius customer on the same table ;) ) Crowd was getting thinner by the time and we visited he lotus pond and bigger lake to find some more birds.When I started back home it was 11 AM
Birds Spotted

Bird	Comments
Shikra	Pigeon sized with creamish belly
Male Koel	Looks like crow has a longer tail and red eyes. beak is smaller.
Female Koel	Has white spots on back and red eye
Jungle Crow	Beak is longer the house crow and color is jet black
Pariah Kite	Also known as Black kite
Green Barbet	Makes kutter kutter sound
Flower pecker bird	Dint know that there were 38 varieties of flower pecker.
Jungle Myna	Does not have yellow patch behind eye and has very small crest(?)
Rose ringed parakeet	India does not have Parrots, there are only parakeets
Male Golden Oreole	Yellow body with black back.
Black Drongo	Smaller than koel and has a long tail.
Spotted dove	Clay colored with white spots
Grey headed starling	May be I wrote the name worng ?
Brahminy Kite Juvenile	Looks similar to Pariah Kite but has got white spots on chest.
White throated Kingfisher	Found near the lotus pond.
Little Comorant
Egret
Purple Moorhen	Has got a red beak and purple back of the size of egret I could not find a photograph when I searched for Gallinula Chloropus did not look like the one I had seen.
Indian Moorhen	Smaller than Purple Moore Hen
Pond Heron

If you want to join .. : It starts at 7:30 AM on every second sunday of the month near west side of the Glass house at Lalbagh. If you are first time birder it will be very good opportunity to learn from experienced and enthusiastic birders full of knowledge. I guess this is the best way to start off.

Birding at Lalbagh