A few of my favourite wings - I and the Bird #148

(With due apologies to Hammerstein, Julie Andrews and Sound of Music!)

Red Northern Flickers and Himalayan Griffons

Pale blue eggs and nest-building herons
Brown Lincoln Sparrows and a Snail Kite in wing
These are a few of my favorite things.

When the Stints limp
and the vultures die
When I'm feeling sad
I simply remember my favorite wings
And then I don't feel...so bad

Red vented bulbuls and Coppersmith barbets
Birding with children
And wagtails with stonechats
Idying birds with beaks, crests and things
These are a few of my confusing wings!


Woodpeckers in forests with streaks and white patches
Sri Lankan Frogmouth with lovely eyelashes
A warbler singing with the coming of spring
These are a few of my favorite wings

When the poachers kill
When the trees fall
When I'm feeling sad
I simply remember my favorite wings
And then I don't feel...sooooo baaad.

**************

List of Contributors

• Larry Jordan at The Birders Report
• Mike at Slugyard
• Nate at the Drinking Bird Blog
• Blake Mathys at the American Birding Association
• The Bird Study Ecology Group
• James at 10,000 Birds
• Deb at Dont Bug Me
• Amila at Gallicissa
• Gopi Sundar at Sarus Scape
• Thomas & Shilpy at Walk the Wilderness
• Howard King at Bahrain Bird Report
• Sandeep Somasekharan at The Green Ogre
• Frank Boxell at The Early Birder
• Ram at Trails of a Traveler
• Pangea Progress
• Shirl at Life's Indulgences
• Eddy Kuttschreuter

IATB # 149 will be hosted by Kirk Mona at Twin Cities Naturalist on 28/4/11. Send in your entries by the 22nd!

Ko-el crescendoes

A depression in the bay
Oh hurray!
Cool winds and cloudy skies
Leaves green and sun goodbye.

The rains, the koel finds his voice
eager to find a mate of choice.
The call, not romantic,
More than a trifle frantic.
A male koel calls. Photo by Mr Ramanan
Up the scale, a crescendo
Ceasing abruptly, uh oh!
All through the day, the call
Sharp, shrill, not a drawl.

Here comes the lady, speckled
Has she been wooed or heckled?

In need of a nest
A crow’s is the best.
Now here’s the ploy
The koel male a decoy.

Eggs laid in crow mama’s brood.
No, crow papa not at all clued.
Brood parasitism unmatched
koel’s cunning plan hatched.


The female koel arrives. Photo by Mr Ramanan
Koel chicks born domineering
Kicking crow eggs, sneering.
But Nature’s playing field levelled
Nine months, the koel bedevilled.

No call, no mate
That is its fate.
Skulking in trees, soundless,
A life quite joyless?

The koel male has blue-green feathers, adding to its basically black plumage. Photo by Mr Ramanan

Read about The call of the koel.

Reading, learning, birding, blogging - I and the Bird #109

I and the Bird is a carnival celebrating the interaction of human and avian, an ongoing exploration of the endless fascination with birdlife all around the world. It is also a biweekly showcase of the best bird writing on the web published on alternating Thursday.

Its my pleasure to host this fortnight's IATB.

IATB I was to host
For which I received many a post.
With virtual wonder I did embark
to mountains, deserts and nature parks.
I share with you now all that I learned
As from one blog to another I turned.

Close to home, on the outskirts of Bangalore
T&S discovered a treasure.
Streaked Weavers they found
And their joys knew no bound.
They clicked away at leisure,

for all our viewing pleasure.

Ashwin, further north, was wandering the deserts of Thar
Looking for Raptors and Agamids near and far.
Falcons and eagles a plenty he did find
Uromastyx hardwickii, they did not mind.


A pair of Black Drongos, Ameen did see
As he drove along Ranthambore in his Gypsy.
They screamed and duelled and rolled about,
Is this war or love? Read and find out!

Over the oceans, to a place called Mull

Where Ian
Saw Dunlins,
Sanderlings and plovers,
Godwits and even an Otter!

Across the Atlantic, GrrlScientist's in NYC,
Birding and educating,

Travelling and teaching.
Check out her mystery bird from South Dakota,
Of which I had no inkling, not even an iota.


Larry is in California
Writing about Athene cunicularia.
This Burrowing Owl
Has him concerned
Can we give homes to these fowls?

Connie in nearby Colorado
Had a sunny interlude with a Junco.
While it bathed in the sun
She had so much fun
That she has written all about it!



Up at the Idaho Bird Observatory,
Rob tells this story.
Hawk trapping -
netting and banding
raptors attracted to lures.
And then came the Peregrine
In a stoop, dive-bombing,
Roaring,
Putting a jetplane to shame!

The Peregrine was also spied in Arctic bay

By Clare on a snow day.

The hungry fellow wanted a raven.

The latter definitely not craven.

Ravens, though common in the concrete jungles of Mumbai,
Is not among Sunita’s favourites which fly.
She prefers Oriole and Weaver
Bulbul and Flycatcher
And even that thieving parakeet is better!

Amila, these days is making excuses.
The dSLR that he uses
Is attracted to dragonflies and spiders
Butterflies and grasshoppers.
Between Macros and Skywatches
Frogs and such obsessions,
There is no digiscoping,
And acute paucity of birding!

But Nate loves his mudflats, shorebirds and digiscoping.

On the shores of Jordan lake in NC, he was hoping

to sight a Ruff.

But though the going was not tough,

the American Golden Plover was real enough!

Rooster Sunny was not amused
To see a Sharp Shinned Hawk peruse
Summer Foovay’s chicken and hens
Early one morning, out in the pen.

Down in Bukit Tinggi in Malaysia
A cicada of the genus Dundubia,
BESG found, clamped in the bill of a Trogon.
It sucked on the plant sap
and urinated from the back
before ending up as bird food and a goner.

Science on Tap has two book reviews
And here I am giving you a clue.
Alex and Wesley evoke many smiles and tears
The parrot and owl, such lovely creatures.

Duncan went to Peach Flat Phoenix
To see if Latham’s Snipe he could fix.
There was a first sighting of the season,
But to visit, an even better reason
Were the Flame Robins, spectacular in pics.

Jo at J M Oudesluys
Sketches all the birdies
This time its Ovenbirds she spied
And drew, as her they eyed.

At Potter County, the grosbeaks blushed

Chickadees roamed

and the yellow rumped was actually a Cape May Warbler!

And Mike was amply rewarded

as Ruffed Grouse his path crossed,

and a hen allowed him to photograph her!

In India, our vultures are now scarce

Felled by disease and diclofenac.
More scavengers we need
And for this I do plead
Lets rehabilitate
Before its too late.

Liza Lee Miller at Egret's Nest

also wishes these scavengers all the best.

With a link to IVAD

So please drop by and see.

And so I round-up my verse
Which I hope was better, not worse!
And see you next time
In a different clime
At Foovay's Cauldron, a blog so diverse!

IATB 110 to be hosted by Summer Foovay at Foovay's Cauldron on October 1st 2009. Come join the celebrations!

{All Photos are from the respective blogs..}

A new bird in town

The Hindu : Tamil Nadu / Chennai News : Fulvous Whistling duck sighted at Pallikaranai

Photo by Skandan - Dendrocygna bicolor

See that brown duck, he's not supposed to be here. This is Pallikaranai marsh, a wetland in Madras, and that brown bird is a Fulvous Whistling Duck. According to the experts, this is a first sighting for Madras!

Its visit to Madras was captured by MNS member Skandan. While we were all getting excited and celebratory by Skandan's report in our e-group, the coots don't seem in the least bothered, and the black-winged stilts in the foreground seem to be largely ignoring him.

Poor chap, here he's come from some far-away land, and nobody to give him a half-decent welcome. Now, if it was Bharatpur, it would be a different matter altogether.

Well, I bring up Bharatpur, because I went all the way there, (along with Skandan and others), and we saw Mr Fulvous' extended family - (I assume they are distant relations, the lesser whistling teals.)

Its like finding Toblerone in the local grocery store nowadays, when once they were symbols of your travel to distant and exotic foreign lands. Globalisation, I suppose.

Photo by Skandan - Dendrocygna bicolor

So now, I need to learn how to tell a Greater Whistling Teal from a Lesser. The latter is below. Gorgeous aren't they?

The lesser ones that we saw in Bharatpur, did whistle a lot. They would take off as a flock, whistle away as they did a sortie and then land noisily back among the red azolla.

Photo by Skandan - Dendrocygna javanica

Photo by Carthic - Dendrocygna javanica

Well, its do with the streakings and the size. The larger, is larger (well, but naturally,), and also has more white streakings on its sides. The Fulvous Whistling Duck is supposed to have a distinct, dark black line down the rear neck.

So, now I need to go off to Pallikaranai and see if I find Mr Fulvous still there...after all, one has to be hospitable to visiting guests.....maybe a Mrs Fulvous has joined?

Fulvous Whistling Duck - videos with their calls - Click on the link.

The day's surprises continued....

It was not done with. Skandan and Sripad, then also witnessed a David-Goliath kind of battle. The courageous black-winged stilts (David), took on a black Kite and then some crows, chasing them away, as they fiercely protected their little chicks.

Sripad's photo of the black-winged stilt chasing a crow
Sripad's photo of the black-winged stilt taking on a Black kite

Update - 20/7/09

Of course, the sightings led to much excitement, and many MNS members trooped off to Pallikaranai to see the new bird in town.

Chitra wrote in that she saw around fifteen of the ducks (so it was not a maverick couple), as they flew overhead, crossing the road, and heading north. She also reported that the marsh was teeming with avian life.

spot billed ducks, pheasant tailed jacanas, grebes, coots, BWS, glossy ibises, and the fulvous whistling ducks, along with the usual pelicans, painted storks, egrets, moorhens, purple herons, we also saw three bar tailed godwits one male in breeding plumage (reddish upper body), blue tailed bee eaters, ashy prinias, and black kites

I dragged my husband off and had a quick look-see this morning. We did not see the "stars" of the show, well in any case not well enough to identify...there was a distant bunch of brown ducks.

But I did not mind, because I added two more to my lifer list - Pied avocets and Pheasant-tailed jacanas!

The Pied Avocets have a lovely black-and-white wing pattern, which is captured in this photo by Abhijit Avalaskar so beautifully. I enjoyed watching them take off as a flock, and then come and settle down in the water. When they rested, they were in the background, and I could not see their markings all that clearly, but when they were in flight, it was oh-so-clear.

I cam back home and read a bit about them. They seem to have interesting feeding habits with their long slender upcurved bill, but they were too far away for me to observe this, but I did hear their "high-pitched kleet call" (Salim Ali), as they took off in flocks.

My first encounter with a jacana was at Dungarpur in December 2008, when an immature bronze-winged jacana had me foxed, with its spidery legs and walk-on-leaf spryness.

This time, I was prepared. There were these four spidery-legged birds poking about in the mud, with a long elegant tail, like as if they were in coattails! It was a dull and cloudy day, and these pictures dont do justice to a rather interesting looking bird, with a touch of yellow on its neck.

Sangeeth VS has taken a lovely close-up picture of the pheasant-tailed jacana here.

We then saw another two in the water, holding their tails up, as if they did not want to get them wet.

We wandered around for a while, seeing coots, black-winged stilts and dabchicks by the hundreds, and pelicans lining the electric pylons. There were so many bee-eaters, flashing past us, or sitting on the reeds. Then there were the large purple swamp hens and the smaller moorhens, the solitary purple heron, and a few white ibis. every now and then a black kite would glide overhead, and the ducks and stilts would all get a trifle nervous.

The cars and motorbikes zoomed by, honking impatiently and oblivious to all this lovely bird life.

About Pallikaranai

Pallikaranai is a freshwater wetland, situated in Madras/Chennai. I guess in the old days it served to keep the city's groundwater charged as well. Then came a few years of poor rain, and the city realtors and developers decided it was a jolly good idea to build in this marsh - how could we let such prime land go to waste.

On the other side, the city Corporation also decided to use it as a garbage dumping ground.

Choked from all sides, the birds fled. Citizens got together under various banners to reverse the trend, and there has been some success. The High Court has ordered that garbage dumping and burning in the area be stopped.

According to a report in the Times Of India, though, a High Court panel says garbage is still being burnt at Pallikaranai. The Chennai Corporation has been asked to reply to this charge by July 29th. Lets hope for the best.

Also, the remaining undeveloped areas have been notified as a Reserve Forest, and I noticed that the protective fencing has increased slightly.

These small steps have already brought the birds back. I do hope it continues!

Featured in I and The Bird #105.

Arun spots a Mongolian!

Arun of MNS "saw(and photographed) this female Barheaded Goose ( 2nd March, 2009
5.40 pm), in Koondhakulam (flock of about 120 birds). Contacted the concerned people and found out that -- it had been banded in Darkhad Valley of Northern Mongolia on 17th July 2008 by the Wildlife Conservation Society of Mongolia.... 5000 km journey"

Photo by Arun
I saw these birds for the first time in January this year, when I travelled to Bharatpur, the bird sanctuary in north India.  These geese are quite common in other countries I know, but for us they are definitely not-so-common.

I remember being amused at their honking and bossy ways in the marsh, as they quarreled with each other and waddled around in this most busy fashion!  But to find them all the way down south!  That's quite astonishing!

I wonder what these "Mongolians" thought about our country and our water tanks!  But it looks like their visit is not entirely unusual, as I came across this 2005 The Hindu article where it states that "bare-headed geese" expected to arrive from China are being monitored for the Bird Flu virus!

Koodankulam/Koondakulam, by the way is a sanctuary near Tirunelveli in southern-most Tamil Nadu.  Its well known for a nuclear plant located there.

Look out for wild birds marked in Mongolia

The Wildlife Conservation Society exhorts us to look out for marked birds and report to them if you see any such birds banded either as a collar or on the leg.

Photo by Arun

As I saw this picture of them in flight, I wondered, were they looking to return to their summer homes?

Great work Arun!  (Arun's a doc, by the way, no kidding, a medical doc. )

Update - 30th April, 2009

It seems to be the season to visit Koondakulam.  Other MNS members, (maybe inspired by Arun?) also visited and came back with a gallery-ful of excellent shots and poses of water birds.

Skandan witnessed quite a flamingo performance, reminiscent of the Bolshoi ballet performances of old.

Prof Chandrasekaran on the other hand, was at hand to record the Council Meeting of the Painted Storks, as well as the General Assembly, taking detailed visual notes all the while!

Skandan wrote in, "It ws a great birding trip for us as Mr Pal Pandiyan,the birdman of Koondakulam guided us perfectly to the right spots to have a closer look at many a species.... 

All the snaps are taken from very safe distance and the birds were not disturbed from their habitat at any point..."

Vickie Henderson Art: I and the Bird #93: The Compelling Nature of Birds

Vickie Henderson Art: I and the Bird #93: The Compelling Nature of Birds

Take a look at Vickie's blog.  It hosts the 93rd birding blog carnival, and she has lovely whooping crane paintings as well!  The post on Sarus Cranes, I saw the tallest flying bird! is included in this carnival!

The bird that craved for a ramp

Darter, Snake bird, Pambuttara, Anhinga melanogaster...but to me it will always be the "fashion model" bird!  The waters and trees of Bharatpur are full of them. So "common" were they, that after a couple of days I stopped looking at them. Can you imagine, such a gorgeous bird, and I wouldn't give it a third look.
Photo by Mr Ramanan
A fashion critic could write," She had a lovely long neck, and the black silk saree 
with its beautiful white embroidery stood out under the ramp lights."!!  (The only thing is I dont know if its a she or a he!)

Isn't the photo above amazing?  All the features of the bird - its long snake-like neck, dagger-like bill and the wedge-shaped tail feathers - have been caught so well!

Photo by Sripad They adorned the trees all over, catching the sun to dry their wings. Everybody got great shots of these birds, and as I wondered about their vanity, Mr Chari gently mentioned that they were drying their wings because unlike water off a duck's back, the Darter's feathers do get wet, as they dive into the water in search of fish.

So it is that they spend their days, alternatively diving for fish and drying their wings!
Photo by Carthic

By the end of three days, I was able to do a pretty good imitation of the bird - ask Sripad!
Photo by Mr Ramanan
They are loners, hanging out on the trees alone, which is how we saw them most of the time.  Click on the photo to the left, and see its feet - duck like!

Carthic captured another unusual pose of this bird, as it stared into the water looking for fish.  Its got special neckbones that allows this almost unnatural-looking posture.

Photo by Carthic

Bharatpur
My photo of an Immature!

One mid morning, we came across this Darter, with an abnormally white neck. Old and grey I thought, but it was actually young and immature!!

Its the same bird, folks!

These shots are of the Snake-bird in the water.  It swims with its whole body submerged, looking like the periscope of a submarine!

As it swims, it keeps a keen eye out for the fish, which it chases with speed, shooting its bill out to spear and catch the hapless fish.  When we visited Dungarpur, in December, we saw this piece of hunting action.  The pictures below are from Vedanthangal.

Photos by Sekar
Salim Ali mentions another interesting feint.  If surprised while perched on a tree, it drops down through the branches, almost as if shot, into the water, surfacing at a safe distance.

They are found all over India - where's there's freshwater fish fish there's likely to be a Darter as well. 

Update:

On reading this, Mr Ramanan sent the following great sequence, shot at Vedanthangal. He adds:

As you have narrated about the hunting sequence of the darter, I thought I can share some of it here with you.The darter, unlike cormorants that hunt in flocks, hunts alone using its beak as a weapon to pierce the fish and bring it up. As it has to swallow the head part of the fish first, it tosses and sees that the head goes into mouth first. After feeding, it spreads its feather to dry and also cleans it beak as it contains lot of oily secretions derived while swallowing the fish. These all are 'ACTION SHOTS' for a greedy photographer like me. I have some of them here, which I have photographed at Vedanthangal on various occasions.

Exactly as we saw in Dungarpur!  Thank you Mr Ramanan!

(This is part of a series of posts on a week spent at the Keoladeo sanctuary, in Bharatpur Rajasthan.  To start at the beginning, click here.)

I saw the tallest flying bird!

The Bharatpur narration begins here.

The Sarus Crane - a common resident of north India, a bird I had not seen so far, and one that I will always remember when I think of my first trip to Bharatpur.

For seasoned naturalists and bird watchers, these birds are really no big deal, found as they are in agricultural fields, something like a cattle egret or a pond heron, in the south, I think!  But for me, it was my first time, so indulge me as I take you through my first views.

It was mid-morning, and a bunch of us stood around because we had seen a lot of raptor activity to the left of the road. Two Marsh Harriers circled in the sky, and then we spied two vultures perched in the tall grass, right at the edge of our binocular vision. Just the top of their heads were seen. And among them, was also the reddish head of a king vulture, which suddenly took off and sat on a dead tree, further away. As we trained our binos on it, through the corner of my eye, I saw something large (I mean really large) go gliding through the air, flying rather low, across the road to vanish behind the trees on the right-side of the road/bund that we stood on.
"Wasn't that Sarus cranes?", I exclaimed, but since everyone else was concentrating on the raptors, they seemed to have missed it and looked at me rather dubiously. Anyway, in order to check it out, just-in-case, we went to a gap in the bushes on the other side, amd the pictures you see on the left, are what we saw. A pair, (they are usually in pairs) some distance away, feeding in the marshes!  The pictures on the left are the view we had with the naked eye.  Clicked with my little automatic Sony Cybershot, I even went around a tree further down the road, to see if I would get a better shot. One lives on ambition and hope!
I realise that birdwatching would be no fun absolutely, without a good pair of binos.

The camera is optional really, but without a good pair of binocs, I would not have seen these large birds in their full detail at all, and all the several kinds of ducks would have looked the same.Thanks to my husband, I have a grand pair - 8x42 - that serve me well, and I enjoyed the red head, with the little bald patch on the top of these Sarus cranes.
An inquisitive Nilgai poked her head out from the back, wondering what the fuss was all about.

And now that I have got that account off my chest, and showed you my efforts with the camera, let me also show you some lovely pictures from the cameras of Mr Ramanan and Sripad.  This series of pictures that follow are pieced together, from two or three different instances, and so the light differs.

But, they give you an idea of what I saw through my binocs.  These 5 ft + birds are famous for pairing for life, and participating in a courtship dance.   As I watched through the binocs, the pair were busy digging vigorously in the mud for insects, roots and other such food.


Photo by Mr Ramanan

Suddenly, the larger bird (the male) stalked up rather purposefully towards the female, who spread her wings.  While we along with Mr Ramanan saw this view, 
Photo by Mr Ramanan

Sripad was at another point, and this is what he saw!

Photo by SripadPhoto by Mr Ramanan
Photo by Sripad
Photo by Mr Ramanan

And as our racket increased, off they went, to quieter locations, away from us gawking tourists.  What a life for these stars, never a moment away from the flashbulbs and cameras!!
Photo by Mr Ramanan

So, it was that I did witness the courtship dance of the Sarus cranes, but I think it was the off-season abridged version, not the full show reserved for the breeding season!  I believe, when it is the season, both partners have an extended, elaborate circling and flapping wings option, and lots of bowing and scraping!  Must be some sight.

Below, the National Geographic short video on the Sarus Crane.  Its shot in Nepal, and talks about the crane conservation efforts there.  If you can tolerate the atrocious accent of the voice over (it annoyed me greatly), its quite a nice, short video, and you get to see the chicks, and the nesting habits, as well as some moving shots of these big birds.


I found the article, Working with the Sarus Crane, by K S Gopi Sunder fascinating and educative. Mr Gopi Sunder's efforts to follow the birds and pretend to be a crane make for amusing reading, while at the same time throwing light on their nesting behaviour.

I have one question, and its been nagging me ever since my return. These birds are monogamous and pair for life, so what happens when one of the pair dies?

Update:
This post is included in I and the Bird #93: The Compelling Nature of Birds hosted by Vickie Henderson.