Feb 16th 2024
Our last day at Port Blair was filled with action, centred around Chidiyatapu. I loved Chidiyatpu during our last visit in 2017, when we climbed Mundapahar.
This time, we birded in the reserved area and fields, below. Almost as soon as we got off our cars on the hilly roads of the forest, we saw an Andaman Serpent Eagle, sitting in solitary splendour, quiet, still; while we humans buzzed around with hushed excitement, not wanting to disturb it, but yet trying to get the best possible sightings and photographs.
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| Andaman Serpent-Eagle (Spilornis elgini) Brown, on brown. What a beautiful sight! |
They are smaller than the mainland Crested Serpent Eagles, more brown, and with a single tail bar rather than two.
As we watched it suddenly dropped out of sight, gone in a nano second. Did it spot prey or was it getting away from us? It did not return to this perch.
And then we heard the Shama!
Andaman shama (Copsychus albiventris) - sighted more or less in the same place as during my last visit!
As I watched, enchanted through my binoculars, the Shama moved from one branch to another - and continued its singing. Did not seem to mind us at all, it was too busy with its own daily routine. When it had to, it flitted away into the undergrowth, and so the Shama show ended for me.
Up above, a lipstick red beak whizzed past - a Dollarbird - the same thing happened at Kalatang too. But here, Suresh followed it to the same tree perch and photographed a pair.
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| The Dollarbird (Eurystomus orientalis), with the round dollars on its underwings - quite mynah like, though those beaks are a giveaway. I read that they love the top of bare/dead trees. |
These birds have a lovely "short" colour (to use saree parlance), with the sun causing the blue-black to shimmer.
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| We moved on from the hilly, forested road, to a track between farming lands. It was past 7 in the morning, and the sun slanted in from above the nearby hills. |
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| A spider's nest created a lovely "kolam" on a wild plant. |
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| By the side of the road, a happy jumble of weeds, including Touch-Me-Nots harboured grasshoppers and other little critters. |
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| An Indian Wanderer rested on a leaf, that seemed eaten by caterpillars. I couldn't figure which plant - the leaves look a bit like my home jasmine plant. |
Plume-toed swiftlets - we saw them everywhere, everyday. But here, there was a huge cloud of them. Squarish tail and white bellies - that's the extent of features I could identify - 10x binoculars notwithstanding - so swift are these swiftlets. Collocalia affinis affinis is the Andaman subspecies. It gets its name from a tuft of feathers close to the rear-facing toe - the hallux. So, the toe is not plumed, but it has a plume, if you know what I mean.
While the swiftlets flew, the mynas were busy with their nest building. I love mynas - they have so much "personality". They were busy going in and out with sticks and twigs - no time for us.
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| I watched with delight. Suresh clicked away - he has a whole series of pictures. |
Jabili gently suggested we move on - to "walk a bit up an incline" - I later realised we walked about 200m! 😅
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| Monkey Jack trees all around. |
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| We reached this point - that was Bada Balu beach down there. |
Enchanting, mesmersing..what to say, am short of words..
ReplyDeletePurple in the cuckoo, is somewhat like the gray in gray headed swamphen
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