Wednesday, December 22, 2010

Birds from around Bangalore

Day 1(Dec 11th) :
I got few suggestions from the Bngbirds about good locations. I decided to check out Muthanallur lake area along with my trsuted assitant Satvik. Its less than half hour drive from Belandur area. I kept asking for MKere(lake in Kannada) and got there without losing my way.
Its suprising how birds do not feel threatened by vehicles. Took pictures of a feisty Drongo to heart's content. Would have liked a more natural perch but telephone wires will do for now.
We saw a number of smaller birds that I did not recognize. May be commonplace, but I have always found it  difficult to id them with the help of Salim Ali's book. This looks like a Pipit or Warbler. It was smaller than a
Babbler.


This one looked so much like an Indian Robin ut it does not have the white ptach. Not sure what it is otherwise ..

Here I saw a simialr bird with a worm in its beak ...Shortly afterwards, we saw a Bulbul rob it of the worm and the bird looked on..

We saw another small bird on the wire. Looked like a Pied Bushchat. But, I am not too sure.

We turned to the grove which had few good things in store for us. We hung around and finally got few shots of a Female Asian Koel after hearing its calls.

 
I saw a bright yellow bird. It was very elusive but we moved around the grove to get a shot of a Golden Oriole if only for my records.
Day 2(Dec 12th):
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We headedc for the Valley School, Kanakpura Road. Thanksfully, we had a friend who knew the place and we could easily get entry to the campus.
We saw a Small Minivet soon after entering the campus.
Soon after I saw a Male Asian Koel on the same tree. 
 We heard a low-pitched and persistent calls from a bird that was very well camouflaged inspite of the bright pumage. It turned out to be a Coppersmith Bartbet.




It got inside a grove and saw few small birds. This looks like a Robin or a Flycatcher.

This was another bird that I could not id. Looked an Oriental Magpie Robin.

I saw a yellow bird going up the foliage, again could not id. Not a great picture, you will barely be able to locate this - great camouflage !!


I also saw a bird that looked like Maroon Oriole(identified later using Salim Ali) but was fidgeting with the lens extender at the moment and could not shoot.
Also saw a White Cheeked Barbet which did not mind me coming up close as it was digging into a tree-hole for some goodies.


Will come back to Valley School for sure. Its sheer pleasure to be among the varied chatter of the birds in this campus. I would love help on idenifying or correcting the id of birds above.