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.

5 comments:

  1. Nice post, I love Valley School, too, want to know where MKere is. Will email you!

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  2. Lovely photos!
    The small bird below the Coppersmith is Ashy Prinia.

    And for one second, I thought some big python was about to get the Coppersmith. Curious to know what that structure actually is...

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  3. Vibhakar, glad to see that you've made it to Muthanallur Lake and Valley School! Right time to dive into birding!

    Looking at the pictures, you probably went to the start of the MKere and went along the bund. I would suggest going further down the road (which diverges first and then comes close to MKere again). You should catch Pelican, egrets, ducks, etc.

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  4. You've got a good variety of birds there! The Black Drongo is nice. The second image (Paddyfield Pipit?) could be a candidate for Bushlark too (Jerdon's?), looking at the stouter beak. Images below this could be of female pied bushchats?

    The barely visible yellow bird is probably a Common Iora; good catch! Incidentally, the female of the Scarlet Minivet is also yellow!

    Maroon Oriole? Are they found in the South? There are images from Corbett, Assam on INW.

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  5. Adding my Muthanallur link (shamelessly) here :-)
    http://picasaweb.google.com/rb.rajesh/2010_12_12MuthanallurLake#

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