19 Jan 14: White-naped Tit (Wow)

The good news was Bill had managed to contact Jugal & he had space for us to stay at CEDO for the next couple of nights. Therefore, it was off to CEDO soon after dawn. While we were waiting for Shiva to bring the car, we spotted a couple of Common Koels in the sole tree in our busy side street. A closer scan of the tree revealed 7 birds sitting there.

Common Koel: Male

Common Koel: Female

Cow pen: Cows are sacred in India & clean up a lot of the vegetable waste on the Indian streets. These ones were lucky? as they had a pen to stay in overnight next to a small temple by our hotel

Vegetable seller: There always seems to be a good selection of vegetables on sale in Indian towns

The good news is Jugal has expanded his accommodation area & now has 8 rooms. I had tried to contact him by email from the Western Ghats, but the email addresses I had were out of date & had no responses. Jugal's current contact details are cedobirding.com or cedoindia@yahoo.com.

Jugal: In front of the CEDO entrance

Another view of CEDO

After unloading the car of the bags into our rooms, we were soon heading out again. The Great Rann of Kutch area has a good selection of species within an hour or two of driving, but the main target for both of us was the tricky to see, dry country White-naped Tit. I had looked for this on my first Indian trip, but didn't have a good site & it was one of the main birds to hopefully see in Gujarat. Jugal was free to come along as our guide for the morning, which was great as this was a bird he has extensively studied in the past. But our first stop was when a dog sized mammal appeared on the road & stopped to look at us. As we got closer, we realised it was a Caracal (like a small Lynx) & all shouted at Shiva to stop. He did annoyingly, using only friction to break the car, so we ended up stopping close to where it had run into the impenetrable bushes (obviously never to be seen again). This was only the third Caracal that Jugal had seen locally in 20 years of living there. The chances are it would have disappeared had we stopped sooner. We were all elated, but a bit disappointed at the brief views. Soon after was the first birding stop: an arid rocky slope to look for Sykes's Lark.

We had some help to flush the Sykes's Larks

Indian Red-winged Bushlark: Also know as Indian Bushlark. The streaked crown, streaky breast & white surrounding the cheek patch separate it from Singing Bushlark. In flight, the rufous in the wing was obvious

Ashy-crowned Finchlark: Female

Sykes's Lark: They like bare, stoney ground & this area looked perfect 

Sykes's Lark

Sykes's Lark: The breast had a strong chestnut wash to it

Tawny Pipit

Rufous-fronted Prinia: Showing a good rufous forehead, as well as the whitish lores, supercilium & underparts 

Rufous-fronted Prinia: The pale tail tips show well in this photo

Moving further down the road, we reached the White-naped Tit area. This was an area of decent bushes on an arid, rocky hillside with a small temple nearby. Jugal quickly located a pair which hung around for long enough for reasonable photos to be be taken. Soon after he picked up a Marshall's Iora, which was very approachable & carried on feeding despite me getting fairly close.

The small temple: Indian temples are often the best kept of buildings in India

Jugal & Bill looking for the White-naped Tit

A typical view of the arid bush country

Indian Grey Francolin

Small Minivet: Male

Marshall's Iora

Marshall's Iora: Couldn't resist another photo

Black Redstart: Female

White-naped Tit: A pair quickly appeared to Jugal's tape

White-naped Tit: It looked even better when it turned around

White-naped Tit: A photo of the white nape

Bay-backed Shrike

Grey-necked Bunting

Butterfly

Finally, it was time to head back to CEDO for lunch. After the excellent food at Desert Coursers, the food whilst good vegetarian food, was a bit disappointing.

Booted Eagle: Pale phase over CEDO

5 Jan 14 - The Final Afternoon at Thattekad

The final afternoon of the trip with Brian & Vinod, but the good news from my viewpoint is I've still got 24 days left in India. So if your not already bored by Indian photos on this blog, then I've still got plenty of opportunity to change that. We had a last couple of hours to look around Thattekad for some final birds, before Brian was due to head off for the final 3 hour journey to Cochin. Fortunately, we found a decent bird flock in the last 30 minutes to finish off the trip. Even better this had a Fork-tailed Drongo Cuckoo in it. The Drongo Cuckoos look very similar on first appearances to a Drongo & it's was no surprise to find that they use Drongos as hosts to bring up their offspring.

Fork-tailed Drongo Cuckoo: Another recent split from Asian Drongo Cuckoo which has a square tail. The barring on the undertail coverts confirms this is a Drongo Cuckoo & not a Drongo

Cattle Egret: Providing a personal bug removal service to this cow

Black Baza: This small Baza must be one of the best Asian raptors

Common Koel: This is a commonly heard, but less frequently seen, Cuckoo

Black-hooded Oriole: Male

Malabar Woodshrike

Three-striped Palm Squirrel: This is the common striped Palm Squirrel of Peninsula India, but is replaced at higher elevations of the Western Ghats by Western Ghats Striped Squirrel

Nilgiri Palm Squirrel: This Palm Squirrel appears unstriped & has a strong rufous band in the tail so I am assuming its this species as Three-striped should have a grey tail (but would welcome comments)

Green Forest Lizard: This Lizard was about 9 inches long

Georgie & the car

End of trip photo

I couldn't stay at Thattekad & ask for some additional time looking for Owls from Vinod as he was booked to guide the people already staying in his homestay. So after saying goodbye to everybody, I headed back in a taxi, to the cooler temperatures of Munnar for a few days. The next few days were spent starting to plan for the rest of my time in India & doing some blog updates.

Vinod: A good bird guide for the Western Ghats

If anybody is considering a Western Ghats trip, then I can definitely recommend Vinod as a guide. He is a thoroughly likable guy, who knows a lot of good sites for the birds & mammals in the Western Ghats. This is especially true around Munnar & Thattekad where his local knowledge helped us see most of the remaining birds we needed in the last 2.5 days & he works hard in the field to find you the birds. Like a lot of the local guides, he struggled a bit with his Phyllos Warblers identification. But I quite liked that as it mean that I had to do the work to find the better Warblers amongst the Greenish & Tickell's Warblers & I didn't want to have all the birds just identified by somebody else for me. He also has a homestay at Thattekad with 2 rooms & a wife who cooks good Indian food. Unfortunately, for me both rooms were occupied while we were there & the tourists were expecting Vinod to take them out for a general wildlife experience. Vinod's contact details are (Vinod Narayanan, vinodnatu1@gmail.com, +91 9746248274 or +91 8943894087).