2010-01-02 Bhigwan Part1

River Tern


Marsh Harrier with a catch in its feet


River tern with a big catch


Wolly necked stork


Marsh harrier in flight


Small green beeeater


Small green beeeater


Warbler (Blyth's may be?)


Small green beeeater


Blue throat. It was a pleasure to watch from close








Bay backed shrike. Note the redish back thick eye band extending very high on its forehead.


Yellow wattled lapwings


A black kite encounter with brahminy juvenile.


Grey wagtail


Painted stork


Spotted eagle. Was sitting very far and a grey heron sitting on the top of the tree next to it was very agitated (mostly by the raptors presence)


Black shouldered kite


Brahminy Kite




Open billed stork

2010-01-17 Sewri

Had not visited Sewri for a long time.
So reached sewri at 4pm with my father.
Lowest tide was (6:30pm)

The water had receeded a lot and the area left and right of jetty was filled with flamingoes.

Juvenile and adult lesser flamingoes were seen nearby

Juvenile lesser flamingo


Lesser Flamingo


Went on the deck of the ship which was being repaired.
Flamingoes in flight


Western reef egret


But there were not many waders.
Saw some redshanks, common sandpiper, little ringed plover, few godwits and a flock of stints nearby.
Generally there huge flocks of godwits, stints and plovers.

But at a distance i could see many small waders beyond the flamingoes.
Also there was huge flock of gulls/terns at the Mahul end.

To the left of Mahul a land mass was visible extending towards Nhava.
Somehow had not noticed this before.
There was a huge flock of birds (flamingoes and gulls) on this land mass.

Flamingoes on land mass with the Tata jetty seen at back


Mahul side flamingoes


I guess there were ateast 5000-10000 flamingoes.


Brahminy Kite


The prize of the day was the black capped kingfisher on the dry bush near the jetty. It also gave us a demo of its hunting skills :-)

Profile pic of black capped


Back view of black capped kingfisher


Blacked capped kingfisher hunting


Return from hunt


Resting after the hunt


Blacked capped kingfisher (Front)


In addition saw a small blue and white throated kingfisher nearby.

Other birds seen
Grey heron
Western reef egret
White Ibis
Brahminy Kite
Gull billed tern
Black/Brown headed gulls
Pond heron

2009-11-26 Pune

Basically from mumbai I am in pune on weekdays for office work.
Sometimes when i stay over the weekend i visit a small tekdi just at the end of the road perpendicular to the paud road.

Location and the area that i have explored is marked in the map below (courtesy: google earth).


This hillock is mostly barren with patches of trees mainly Babul, Australian Acacia and Gliricidia at the base and mostly Gliricidia and some other trees at the top of the hillock.

On the barren lands are seen birds like Red wattled lapwings, Indian robin (abundant), large grey babblers (making a lot of ruckus).
On the small shrubs and Babul trees are large grey babblers, red vented bulbuls, Brahminy starling.

Other than these most common seen are the following species
Common hoopoe
Small minivet
Common woodshrike
Pied cuckoo
Shikra
Tree pie
Golder oriole
Oriental White-eye
Plain prinia
Grey breasted prinia
Tree pipit
Jungle bush quail
Purple sunbird
Purple rumped sunbird
Pale billed flowerpecker
Black drongo
Long tailed shrike

Some pics of the birds(taken with my Panasonic FZ28) seen on 26th Nov are here and some other pics taken earlier are in this blog
Tekdi April 2009

Indian Robin (Male)


Indian Robin (Male)


Indian Robin (Female)


Plain Prinia


Large Grey Babbler


Common Woodshrike


Pied Crested Cuckoo


Pied Crested Cuckoo


Small Minivet


Small Minivet


Great tit



Great tit


Other blogs of trip around pune
Sinhgad valley Jan 2009
Kavdi Jan 2009
Bigwan Jan 2008