Birder Young

I had an opportunity to explore Western Ghats in Dandeli, Karnataka during Feb-23. I went with a birding group. We took an overnight train from Dadar to Londa Junction which reached a little late but that didn't delay us from Birding. The tour organizer had arranged for cars to pick us up from Londa station. The journey from Londa to our first birding destination was 45 minutes.  Old Magazine House is a famous birding resort. There is a bird hide in the resort where you can spot most of the common birds of the region for photography. The resort has rooms for stay as well as a large open dining hall which serves all meals. We got into birding as soon as we reached the resort. I didn't waste any time and went straight to the hide. Immediately, I saw Indian Yellow Tit and Tickell's Blue Flycatcher and a Great Hornbill flying overhead. This shows you the abundance of bird species in this place. Over the next 2 days, we were able to see Spot Bellied Eagle Owl, Asian Emerald Dove...

 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...