2014-12-25 Bhigwan

Read about pre-lunch Session at Kavdi here

 We had brunch at Urali Kanchan and then started for Bhigwan by around 12:30pm.

The road has improved a lot and is completely 4 lane.
There are some problems due to multiple crossings on the highway but its ok.
We were at diksal by 1:30pm.

Just as we start going towards Diksal just before the bridge on the right we saw a lot of birds near the road.
There were mainly open billed storks, 20+ glossy ibis, black winged stilts, little ringed plover.

After the birdge in the water on the left side there were 10+ Pheasant tailed jacanas juvenile, lesser whistling ducks, Purple heron, Purple swamphens.

The link road to diskal was in a very bad condition and turned in less than 1/4th the distance and returned back to the main road.

From there we came back to bhigwan and headed to Kumbhargoan using the service road itself.

The water bodies dot the side of the service road and there were many birds to be seen here to but they were very weary of humans and as soon as we stopped the car the watch them they flew away.

There were whiskered terns hunting and one of them sat on a small water plant and we could approach it very silently and take some good pictures.
We found Sandeep quite knowledgable and hospitable.
He had no empty rooms for night stay but made an arrangement to pitch a 2 man tent on the terrace of his house and rest it to us.

We immediately start for the boat ride and got some gulls, terns, flamingoes, spoonbills. We could not get flamingoes for long since as we were watching them some fishermen came from behind the flamingoes and scared them away to the far end of Diksal.

We reached Sandeep Nagres place by around 3:30pm. On the way we could not see much activities of birds though we were looking out for the yellow wattled lapwings on the side of the pipeline.

There are now plenty of flamingo points that have come up in kumbhargoan providing home stay accomodations, food and boat rides to watch flamingoes and other water birds.

After having some tea we immediately for watching the flamingoes.
The flamingoes were on the other side of kumbhargoan.
It took us around 15-20min to reach to a point from where we could view them well.

On the way we encountered some fishermen collecting their catch and some gulls trying to pounce on some the catch

There were many Greater Flamingoes with Spoonbills and other water fowl.

But as we were watching them a group of fishermen approached from the other side and disturbed them. They flew away to the diksal side of the backwaters.

So we started back and decided to spend some time on the way to photograph some gulls and terns hunting.

A fisherman collecting his catch of the day as we were returning to the shore.

We came back had bath with hot water which Sandeep made available very gladly, had dinner at 8pm.

It was a very long day starting at 4am in the morning from Mumbai, birding at Kavdi, diksal and kumbhargoan.

Next day was also going to long too as we had planned to start in the boat before sunrise so that we could get some pics in golden light and then do the Mayuresh Wildlife Sanctuary and then return back to Mumbai.

Read about next day morning session here