Kokkare Belllur, stork city.

The first birding adventure of mine in the south was at this rather cutely named hamlet called Kokkare Bellur. The name means "Stork Bellur" and its named for the huge numbers of large water birds mainly storks cranes pelicans and herons that make it their home and their nursery in the winter months. A short dash from Bangalore in the car at 4 a.m. brought me to stork city at about 6 a.m. on a december morning. It was really too early to see much and the sun was not up. My dream was to shoot the rising sun over the heronry and so made sure that i was there with time to spare. The thing I had not reckoned on was that I would need someone to tell me where the storks were in stork city.

All the info I had prior to this was that they were everywhere and that was fairly clear but as with the early bird getting the worm the early birder had to make do with a coffee and a wait. " there are only pelicans now sir and they are on top of that tree there." The top of that tree was about 40 feet off the ground and the whole sun rise shot idea bit the dust as it were. Apparently not only was I early in the day but I was also too late in the year by 11 months. "The cranes and storks arrive in january Sir, this is still early". Very well, so i determined to make good my trip and soon enough fell in with a bunch of little urchins who were actually very helpful telling me where the river was and where the birds would be and so on. The river proved to be a dud for the most part but the news of the dam on the river that made a lake was very useful. The flat green expanse of water was edged with water hyacinth and huge water lily leaves that like of which i had not seen before. Numbers of bronze winged jacana, egrets, purple swamp hen, herons,among others were there having a gala time. The dam itself is about 50 meters long and encloses the river with a lake behind it for about 4-5 acres.

The pelicans came into view as the sun rose over the trees and got a few good shots there too. They are the world's heaviest flying birds and you can hear the whirr of their wings as they come in to land. there were 2-3 trees with about 40 or more birds on them very high up though so could not really see the nests and so on.

Another nice coffee at the local set me up for my leisurely drive back home. A nice mornings work.

More bird driving, this time Ladakh!

I will be very honest with you, I never thought of bird when I was planning to drive to Leh from Delhi and come back via Srinagar. Really I had no thought of birds at all. And yet I look back and see that on my trip I stopped for birds a fair bit. Ok the pix are really amateur and blah but the surprise of them was the fun part.

Two birds I had never heard of were spotted and Photographed by my daughter all of 13. With my camera and without my permission, but thank God she did cuz I would never have the Horned lark and the Himalayan chough in my collection if she had 'obeyed dad and not touched my DSLR".

The landscape is stark and forbidding and the road is.... road what road... there is no road but the exhilarating thrill of the high mountains gives me a rush. This is all the more so when a francolin struts across the road (?) in front of my car or darts off down the hillside as I drive by. The birds made me watch the sides of the road and the hillside much more. I had dismissed the Himalayan chough as a crow initially and not really given it much attention, in truth the road at Rohtang was so bad and cut up, that I was giving staying in one piece, my full focussed attention. It was only in Pang that Anjali, my daughter got the pic of the chough.

Crossing the Moreh Plains after Pang was a battle in itself and I will not make that trip again in a Santro loaded with kids, for all the tea in China. It was a really hairy experience. I had Scorpio drivers who met me in Leh comment on the road and ask me how I got thru. At the tea stop almost at the end of that awful drive across the Moreh plains was where my daughter spotted the Horned Lark. Actually I had to put that pic on Indamike in a thread called "which bird is this" to know it was the horned Lark. I was busy darning my frayed nerves looking nonchalant and filling the car with gas when she took the pic and saw it only later that night in Leh.

The ubiquitous Himalayan Magpie is a beautiful if rather threadbare bird. It looks for all the world like it needs to get its suit repaired at the tailors. These are all over the place in Leh and the whole Ladakh region. Funnily enough I never saw them in 2009 when i was up there. This trip in July 2010 I saw a whole truckload. Somehow had not got the hang of the camera then, so pix are not really up to scratch.

Then wonderfully enough driving to Pangong lake I was able to photograph a Himalayan Marmot. These are usually shy creatures but driving by does not seem to bother them. The photo taken from a moving car was not too bad. Driving in Ladakh is a little different to most other wilderness drives. The stark landscape is an acquired taste. Personally I love it. The beautiful rock formations and the striated layers of rock in mountain sides, the sand blowing away from the edges of ridges exposing spires of granite forming fantastic castle turrets on the side of the rivers, these are the sights that thrill me. Driving along and seeing mile after mile of rocky slopes and huge slabs of upright rock hundreds of feet in the air gives one a feeling that cant be explained easily. The Mars-scape, as it was described to me is interspersed with patches of deepest green and, as the marmots have proved, life abounds here. Further along we saw a whole family of marmots and got a couple pix of them too.

I am not really into this type of drive by shooting but in some situations it seems the only way to get anything, so any port in a storm. At pangong there are gulls, black headed gulls. I just could not believe my eyes. How could there be gulls at 16500 ft on a lake a few thousand km inland??? It really boggles the mind. How did they get there? What do they eat? Nest? Breed? Its just unfathomable, at least for me.

Seeing them was fun though and I just enjoyed the view after i got over my initial shock. The panorama was to die for and that was worth it all.

One cold day in January.

I have a great friend in Chandigarh with whom I play Scrabble for points. I might add he is the only one I do that with cuz he is the only one who has beaten me in recent years. James, is a great birder and you will find his bird blog very interesting.

It was a really cold day and I had been frustrated in my attempt to get anything done due to the Govt. order closing schools. So, determined that my trip should not go to waste I asked James if he wanted to go on a walk and look for some birds. James is a really lucky guy, in that he attracts birds. I got the beautiful shot of the bee-eaters in my blog when I was with him. So I was pretty hopeful of some good sightings.

He suggested we count species and see how many we get in a half hour. So off we went. The housing sector in Panchkula where we were did not have much to offer but he of course knew all the good spots. A nullah in the middle of the sector was a rich spot and we were alternately repelled and attracted by the polluting plastic and reeking water and the quantity of bird life. The ubiquitous egrets dotted the nullah

A smart White Chested Kingfisher sat on a wire overlooking the nullah, he very kindly stayed till I could take a picture before flying off with a squishack squishack. A little walk around the houses to get us nearer the nullah and we were in front of a lapwing and right behind him a little sandpiper plied his beak in the flowing water seeking his dinner. A ring-necked plover flew off as we approached. We were hoping for a sight of some silver-bills but no such luck.

The aerobatics team of swallows and martens was there in strength and they put up a great show. The twisting, weaving, rolling, somersaulting, loop-the-loop flying was simply awesome. Try as I might I could not get a decent shot and finally after about 20 tries just gave up and enjoyed the show. A couple of pond herons flew in as the lights went low with the sun dipping below the building height. These were so amazingly camouflaged it was so hard to see them fro the bridge over the nullah. I had just seen them land there, if not I would have probably sworn there was nothing there. Their brown green backs and bills make it almost impossible to see them from above.

Leaving the nullah behind we walked through the housing area and came through a little village area with collared doves and spotted doves and a score of common mynas poking about. These birds are bold as the proverbial brass monkey virtually fearless and walking about among people working, ladies sitting and chatting, and the shopkeeper plying his trade with equal nonchalance. Their sharp little eyes missing nothing as they forage freely under the charpai’s and under the chai-wallahs nose for morsels of food.

The sun had well and truly set and the flights of birds heading home to roost crisscrossed the sky. Egrets, mynas, lapwings in ones and twos, a solitary fish eagle all heading different directions passed us overhead and the chill evening breeze set our feet for home and a hot chai with the hope of a pakoda.

The species count was 21 and I was pretty happy about it. James said he has seen up to 40 in the same space and time in the past. I told you he was lucky fellow.

CHILIKA PLANS AND A DRIVE TO REMEMBER!

On arriving in Orissa I had a day free so decided to go to Chilika and watch dolphins at Chilika lake. The rare endangered Irrwady dolphin is resident there. Actually Orissa has a lot of wildlife happening and I was really pleasantly surprised at all the opportunities Orissa provides.

Well my flight arrived early and my driver arrived late so that combined to start me off late. Then my dear driver was completely clueless about where to go and how to go and despite saying clearly i wanted to go to Satpada he pushed off in a different direction. Some times i really wonder if the angel of bird watching does this on purpose to teach us all patience.

When I found he was on the road to no where i got a little upset about it and he very sweetly told me he would take a short cut so we would make up for lost time and be there in no time at all. yeah yeah right!

Turned out that on the little village road he took i got some great photo ops and enjoyed watching a lot of birds. Needless to say i missed the dolphins because the short cut took us 3 hours and the day completely went south.

Any way the highlight of the day was the really cool prawn masala lunch Oriya style with chapatis that were really to be seen to be believed. Luckily the prawns were awesome so i forgave the guy his chapatis and moseyed on.