Birder Young

 I had an opportunity to visit my cousins in Chandigarh during annual school vacation. Kasauli is less than 2 hours away from Chandigarh (less than Mumbai-Pune for comparison). It is a good hill station which is still small and neat. I stayed in Kasauli for 2 nights and went for a couple of local birding expeditions. The first was around the Kasauli cantonment in which I managed to see birds like Verditer Flycatcher and Chestnut Bellied Nuthatch. The next day I started for Chakki Morh at 7:30 AM and it took us an hour to reach. It is a forest habitat. It is not dense so it is great for spotting birds. Our naturalist for the day, Rick Toor, was waiting for us at Ishwar Dhaba. The Dhaba offers a good breakfast and I had an Omelette. Then Rick showed us around the common species, the more common ones being Red Billed Leiothrix, Himalayan Bulbul and House Sparrow. Red Billed Leiothrix was a lifer for me and I saw it in huge numbers. The bird was on the ground while feeding on the seeds...

I started 2023 birding with a trip to Viva wetlands. This was my first trip to this hotspot. Viva Wetlands are located in Virar, which can be reached by road from Mumbai. We chose to travel by train as the hotspot is located close to Virar train station. Our group  met at the start of the trail at 8AM in the morning. It was a very warm day for January so I had removed my jacket before starting the trail. The trail was led by one of my favorite birders, Amol. He has been birding in this area for long and I have traveled to Mamachi Wadi beach with him in September-2022. He led us on a long walking path through grassland and wetland habitat. The entire area gets flooded during monsoons but it was dry with walking paths in January. There was soft soil at places in which birds had made track marks overnight. It was fun walking next to bird tracks. The first highlight of the day was Blyth’s pipit which Amol helped us identify in flight. I got a glimpse. My second important sighting w...

During Christmas holidays, I traveled with my family to a remote village in Uttarakhand. Our group started from Delhi in two cars. We traveled through Uttar Pradesh, where a small collision happened between our car and truck. What a way to start a journey!! However, we were all safe and continued to our first stop in Rishikesh. Our resort was located on the banks of holy Ganges and we were able to see evening Aarti on the river bank from the room window. Rishikesh is located in foothills and we started our journey to Kuflon the next day morning. Kuflon is small village in Uttarkashi region of Uttarakhand. It is at an altitude of 1,300 meters above sea level. It is located on the road to Gangotri which is at an even higher altitude of 3,500 meters. I had done my research on what birds to find near Kuflon, however we were not able to find a naturalist in the remote area till last minute. It was going to be difficult to identify hotspots and birds in a new area. Luckily, we found a good...

Matheran is a hill station located in the Sahyadri mountain range. It can be reached from Mumbai by 2 and a half hours drive or similar time by train. The train drops you at Neral station and one can take a taxi from there to Matheran parking. The hill station is traffic free. It is a highly biodiverse place with birds, amphibians and reptiles in good numbers. It was a chilly winter morning when we took the train to go to Neral station. I was wearing a hooded jacket, yet I felt very cold in the train. We joined our birding group at the Neral station. Our group had breakfast and tea a restaurant outside station. We then hired a cab to take for a 25-minute ride to Matheran parking. The first bird we saw, strolling around the parking, was Asian Paradise Flycatcher. We saw the cinnamon morph. While it is called a flycatcher, its feeding habits and behavior are more closely related to monarch family of birds. The bird feeds on different types of insects which it catches during flight. W...

We have been to Kotagiri tea gardens in Jan-2022. This was our second trip to the same place. We explored a new place Aravenu, in addition to our earlier hotspot. 3 rd Sep 2022. We woke up at 5 am to go to Kotagiri.   We stayed in Wellington Gymkhana club. Alternatively, you can stay in Coonoor town. There is a naturalist called Aggal Sivalingam who took us to Kotagiri for birding. We contacted him a few days before our trip. We drove 30 minutes to reach Aravenu village where we started the trail. It was a narrow trail starting on the roadside and leading into tea bush. Despite the thick bush, we were lucky to see Painted Bush Quail, a floor bird.   Interesting behaviours were also seen with long tail shrikes who are very patient birds. eBird list here with picture on Painted Bush Quail. We then took our cab and went to Mulloor village. On the way, we saw Black Eagle. We parked our car at the foot of the hill and climbed into tea gardens. This place was full of birds...

31 st Aug and 1 st Sep 2022 As regular visitors to Nilgiris, Masinagudi had been on our birding list. We were able to contact our naturalist, Siddhan Kuruvi, a few days before our trip. With his help, we were able to fix our transport and stay which made it easy to travel. This blog by Thomas also gave us lot of information before we went to Masinagudi. We started from Coimbatore late morning and parked our car in Ooty. Siddhan was there to pick us up in a Jeep. We started our journey to Masinagudi at 3PM after lunch in Ooty. As soon as we turned into the road to Masinagudi, we saw Grey Headed Canary Flycatcher, Booted Warbler, Niligiri Laughingthrush and Orange Minivet. As we started going deeper in the jungle, the dusk was upon us. We were still able to see Southern Hill Myna, perched on a tall tree, calling loudly. Another notable sighting was Yellow Billed Babbler, which was on the ground close to us. It had a white head, making it look different from a Jungle Babbler. At du...