Nature watch: 25th December 2008 Uran

Started 7 am with Jayesh and Dr Sangeeta.
First stop was at Jasai where we thought that we spotted a white stork.
But it was on the other side of the highway so we had to take a U turn and come back.
There we spotted a single white stork which flew away soon.

White Stork in flight

Just behind the white stork there was a water body with a huge number of water fowl.
There we saw waders like little stints, plovers, redshanks, pied avocets, etc. Also there were painted storks, grey herons, spoonbills, egrets, white ibis. Nothern shovellers and brahiminy ducks were also present.

Painted storks in flight

Gull billed tern

Spoonbills in flight

On the land bordering this water body is a grassland habitat. There we saw huge number of red avadavats. Also were present the stonechat, larks, a bluethroat hopping in the dense thicket of bushes.

A marsh harrier was disturbing the water fowl in between. A black shouldered kite sitting on a wire was keeping an eye on the ground below.

Going ahead we reached Uran to get very disappointed to see all the wetlands very dried up.
We decided to take a look at the standard road leading into the marshes in front of the police station at the end of which there is a water which normally harbors a lot of waterfowl.

On this we got a long tailed shrike, red avadavats, Stonechat, Grey herons, Cormorants, Green bee eaters,etc.

For other waterfowl there was nothing much except for a few marsh sandpipers and a couple of brahminy ducks.

Brahminy duck

There were a large number of red wattled lapwings atleast 10 of them. On the other side of the same road near the railway track we saw a tree full of rosy starlings and a few brahminy starlings.

Little Grebe

Long tailed shrike

Common Stonechat

When we reached the end of the road we met with 2 other birders Mr Babasaheb gaikwad and Mr Athavle. It was nice meeting with Mr Gaikwad whom i had met virtually though his pics on INW :-)

We had some breakfast here. While we were just about to leave the place to Marsh harriers started a show. They were trying to catch something but finally just settled on the marshes after doing some inflight acrobatics giving us good opportunity to take some pics.

Marsh Harrier

While returning back we again stopped at Jasai first to take the pics of the black shouldered kite seated on the wire, then to take a second look at the water body to see the white storks had settled there. But there were the same water fowl which we had seen while coming.

Black shouldered kit in flight

Black shouldered kite

As we were leaving from the that place we saw a huge number of birds on the other side of the highway. We thought there were white storks there so we decided to get to the other side to get a closer look.
As we were nearing the place it was certain that there were white storks along with spoonbills, egrets and black headed ibises.

But just then 2 men started walking in the open along the railway line disturbed everyone and all flew away. We got some flight shots but that's not what we wanted.

Spoonbills, black headed ibises and White stork

Spoonbill

Anyway for some reason 8 white storks did not fly anywhere and we got to observe them for a long time. In the reeds along the road were lot of red avadavats and stonechats. We also spotted a lone pied bushchat and the marsh harrier was making its rounds keeping an eye of the marshes.

White storks