27 Jan 14 - Bharatpur Big Foot

Two or three years ago, local birder Shaun Robson introduced Dorset birders to the concept of Big Foot Birding as it became known locally. The rules are simple: to see or hear as many species of birds in one day starting & finishing at your house & only walking. So no use of cars, bikes, buses or boats. As I was walking around Bharatpur, I was remembering the Big Foot idea & decided that as I was seeing a good selection of wetland & woodland birds that I would avoid the temptation of the rickshaw drivers & see how well I did with a Bharatpur Big Foot. So far the morning's walk from the entrance gate to the small temple & drinks stall had been good with a good selection of typical dry country bush species & lots of waterbirds. I had also had a look from both of the nearby tower hides. However, the main target for the day, Brooks's Warbler, was now in walking range. This likes to feed in the trees along the main track from the temple & drinks stall towards Python Point, which is the track on the map that runs alongside the Ghana canal. So now I had the chance to focus on adding more bush & tree species for the Big Foot list. 

Purple Heron

Purple Heron: Coming in to land

Oriental White Ibis: This is also known as Black-headed Ibis. There are also Spoonbill, Lesser Whistling-duck & a Garganey in the photo

Spoonbill

Lesser Whistling-duck: They are so graceful when they landing 

Lesser Whistling-duck

Knob-billed Duck: With a couple of Painted Storks. This is also known as Comb Duck

Tawny Eagle: Similar to Steppe Eagle, but this dark phase Tawny Eagle has darker wing coverts than the flight feathers, lacks the dark trailing edge to the wing, has a small pale flash on the inner primaries, has vaguely barred flight feathers & a dark tail band. The narrower wings & long tail rule out a Spotted Eagle

Bonelli's Eagle: Juvenile. This is identified by the bulking secondaries, dark primary tips, lack of a dark trailing edge to the wing & tail, narrow black band along the secondary coverts, paler inner primaries, compared to the darker (but not too dark) secondaries & buffy brown throat & upper breast

Rock Dove

Ring-necked Parakeet

Plain Prinia

Hume's Yellow-browed Warbler: This is the nominate humei subspecies

Hume's Yellow-browed Warbler

Oriental Magpie Robin

Bank Myna

Brahminy Myna

Three-striped Palm Squirrel: On the Northern edge of its range

Having walked the path once without any success with the Brooks's Warbler, I turned around to return to the temple area. I was almost as far back as the tower hide, when I heard its distinctive monosyllabic call. Fortunately, I quickly located the bird & managed to confirm the identification & get some photos of this subtle Winter visiting Phyllos. The main features are it is a small Phyllos Warbler with pale olive colouration, a pale yellowish-olive crown stripe, a yellowish supercilium, yellow at the base of the lower mandible, 2 pale wingbars & a yellowish rump. This was another case of the usefulness of the OBC images web site for getting my eye on in advance of seeing the bird.

Brooks's Warbler: One of the things I noticed is the yellowish features seem to almost merge into the overall olive colouration, compared to a Yellow-browed Warbler or Hume's Yellow-browed Warbler, where there are generally clear-cut edges. The second wingbar is faint on this individual, but you can see the supercilium, hints of the crown stripe, the wingbars & the bill colouration. Additionally, the overall colouration with the paler olive underaparts

Brooks's Warbler: Showing the crown stripe

Brooks's Warbler: I can just make out the side of the crown stripe on this photo

Brooks's Warbler: The second wingbar is very faint

Brooks's Warbler: Showing the pale yellow base to the lower mandible  

After a celebratory sprite at the drinks stall, there was time for a slow walk back to the entrance. Lots of tempting offers of rickshaw rides, but I had to say I preferred to walk as trying to explain the Big Foot rules would have been too difficult. I lingered on the main track in the park till dark hoping a Nightjar would fly over or an Owl would start calling. But I was also hoping something interesting would cross the track in the fading light. In 91, a local told us where to stand & we saw an Indian Porcupine crossing the main track at dusk. But I had no joy on any of these species, although I did have another couple of Jackals on the track. Finally, I got back to the hotel after dark & I totted up the species list. I hadn't set out till about 09:00 as I wanted a decent breakfast as I knew I wouldn't get any food in the park & didn't have anything to eat other than a small bar of chocolate. I walked in excess of 10 miles at Bharatpur & saw or heard 98 species of birds & 8 species of mammals. The highlight of the day was seeing my first Brooks's Warbler. With a bit more time to sort out some staked out species like Owls & roosting Nightjars & with a full day of birding, it would be easily possible to break the 100 species barrier. Especially, as the following day, I was to be shown stakeouts for 2 Owl species & a Siberian Rubythroat, that I walked right past, but more of that in the next post. Still it was a great days birding & it was a good total considering I had nothing staked out in advance.

28 Dec 13 - A Tale Of Two Hotels

During the Indian trip, I stayed in a variety of Indian hotels & occasionally homestays & found the standards were highly variable, with no relationship between price, quality, facilities or interest in the staff in doing their job. No more was this highlighted than after the afternoon flight from the Andamans. Unfortunately, due to flight schedules we had to overnight in Chennai. I had thought that in a big city, that we would have been put in to a decent hotel, given the vast choice of hotels on offer.

We ended up getting the Checkers Hotel. While it looks OK from the outside, its a dire hotel, that I wouldn't touch again with a bargepole. Also it was the about the most expensive hotel I stayed in India. Having checked in, we were given a room with no internet or hot water. Both of which we were assured by the check in desk were working. We were then told to run the hot water for 10 minutes & it would work. This was followed by 30 minutes of various people trying it (everybody involved had to run it for themselves rather than examine the evidence, that it hadn't started getting hot over all the previous attempts). At that point, with 4 hopeless jobsworths in suits as well as other non suited staff, they finally listened to our initial demand of a different room. Eventually they cleaned another room & we repeated the same farce with the water (& still broken internet). I started to think we were in an Ealing Comedy at this point. Then we finally tricked one of the suits into admitting they don't turn the boiler on till the evening & it was still late afternoon at this time (its cheaper not to heat the water): this is clearly ridiculous for a hotel with several hundred rooms. So I fail to see why they didn't tell us that rather than go through all the rigmorale of moving us. While I saw on a number of occasions, good clear action to problems if you got to speak to a hotel owner, then the reverse in India also occurs when you get hotels staffed by staff who clearly can't take ownership for even simple things. Eventually, the water was hot, but only by mid evening & the internet was finally started later that day. The respect the staff had for the place was summed up by Brian catching the floor attendant spitting onto the carpet on our way to a very mediocre buffet meal. Still it gave me the opportunity to provide my first honest, but blunt, feedback on Trip Advisor & as I started booking my own hotels later in the trip, I started paying more attention to feedback on Trip Advisor. I big sign of the changing world as travelling a few years ago, all my accommodation info used to come from birding reports or the Lonely Planet guide (which rarely emerged from the rucksack).

Wall decorations: These lovely??? 3D paintings summed up the Checkers Hotel - note, they really were at these odd angles & weren't moved to give a bad impression (just another example of lack of care by the hotel room staff)

It was almost a pleasure when the alarm went off at 04:00 so we could get to the airport for the 05:50 flight to Coimbatore. The flight went well & by 07:30 we were being met by our bird guide, Vinod, & driver, Georgie, for the next leg of the trip. But first we had a 4 or 5 hour journey to get to Jungle Hut, our first accommodation.

The drive from Coimbatore was initially dull, as we travelled through over populated & run down towns and little nice habitat. But after an hour or two of driving, we stopped at a small lake with bushes around it. As we left the vehicle we were greeted by warnings from both Vinod & Georgie, about keeping an eye on where we stepped. Always an important thing in rural India, especially near water, but we were experienced travellers in the Subcontinent & already looking down. A selection of commoner water birds & passerines were added to the trip list.

Shikra: The common Western Ghats Accipter

Blyth's Reed Warbler: Get this & Greenish Warbler clearly establish to your eyes & ears as they are the 2 common reference Warblers in the Western Ghats

Brahminy Myna: Another stunning Starling

After more dull plains, we reached the start of the Nilgiri hills and started to climb rapidly into the hills towards Ooty. There was a lot of tree cover on both sides of the road & plenty of Bonnet Macaques watching what was happening on the roads. About half way up, we stopped for some tea at a tea plantation shop.

Tea Plantation Stop 

Some of the local Nilgiri teas: I particularly liked the Nonsuch Tea, would have been ideal to go with the Nonsuch Service in the Chennai hotel

Bonnet Macaque: This species replaces Rhesus Macaque in Southern India

Continuing up the road, we reached the high hill top town of Ooty, before dropping down on the drier East slope and after another hour or so, we reached our accommodation, Jungle Hut, for the next 2 nights. What a contrast to the previous night. We were greeted on our arrival by Vivek, who runs the place along with the rest of his friendly & attentive team. The immediate feeling is that if something isn't right or you need something, you just had to ask & it would happen. But the chances are things weren't going to go wrong, as they were quietly, but efficiently keeping everything very well run. This is a great place to get away to for a few days with excellent food & organisation. Apart from us it was mainly well heeled Indian families staying for the New Year & talking to them most had been coming back from years: again another good sign of a well run place. Plenty of local birds & mammals made it even better.

Jungle Hut: The main building with the restaurant & bar

Jungle Hut: There are 4 rooms in each well spaced out accommodation hut

Jungle Hut: The view of the Nilgiri ridge

After lunch, it was time to explore the camp for some of the commoner camp species.

Greenish Warbler: The other staple Western Ghats Warbler to thoroughly learn

Asian Brown Flycatcher: A few were seen around Jungle Hut

Oriental Magpie Robin: Male

Oriental Magpie Robin: Female

Jungle Crow: The taxonomy of Jungle Crows in more complicated in the Subcontinent according to Rasmussen (this is Indian Jungle Crow, separated from the Eastern Jungle Crow of the Andamans), but Clements currently lumps them all as Jungle Crow

House Sparrow: No prizes for identify this species