The maddening world of wader identification

Madras is blessed with a lot of water bodies big and small, brackish and fresh. Any self-respecting birder in the city has to know their waders.

Now, if you are as bad as me at this, you will benefit from this "Waders 101" or "Waders for Dummies"!

There's a young man in MNS by the name of Gnanaskandan, (aka GK aka Skandan!), who has patiently put these pictures and the idying tips together. The original pictures can be found on Facebook here.

He has also designed a google map on Birding places around Chennai, which is definitely worth a look-see.

Shanks

1) Common Greenshank (Top) - Grey above - Foreneck & underparts white with Streakes - Greenish legs - Long , stout bill slightly Curved upwards - Prefers : Freshwater & Saltwater wetlands

2) Common Redshank (Bottom) - Variable brown to Grey above - Grey breast - Orange Red at base of bill - Orange Red legs - Prefers : Fresh & coastal waters

Red Shank - Prefers shallow fresh & Coastal waters

2 Species:

1) Spotted Redshank (Pic 1) - Has longer,slightly down curved Red bill., very conspicuous white supercillium (line above the eyes) and less streaks in neck & ear-coverts - Widespred winter visitor - Taken @ Pulicat

2) Common Redshank (Pic 2) - Has shorter bill compared to Spotted Redshank., lacks the white supercillium and more streaks down the neck - slightly smaller than Spotted Redshank - very timid and gives out an alarm call in flight - Taken @ Pulicat

Sandpipers - Size : Bigger than a Little Riged Plover - Prefers Freshwater & Costal wetlands and sandbanks

1) Common Sandpiper (Top left) - Distinct White Shoulder line - White Supercillium extends till nape(Not extending after eyes in Green Sandpiper) - Constantly bobs its head - Greenish yellow legs

2) Green Sandpiper (Top right) - Distinct White Supercillium not extending after eyes(extends till nape in Common Sandpiper) - Dark wings compared to Wood Sandpiper - Greenish Yellow legs

3) Wood Sandpiper (Bottom left) - Heavily Spotted Upperparts - Dark Yelllow legs - Prominent white supercillium

4) Marsh Sandpiper (Botton Right) - Fine Stilt like bill - Foreneck and underparts more whitish compared to other sandpipers - Greenish Yellow legs

Stints - Size : Slightly smaller than a Little Ringed Plover - Prefers shallow fresh & Coastal waters

1) Temminck's Stint (Pic 1) - Yellow legs - Lacks Supercillium - Complete grey Breast band - Uniform grey wing pattern - Widespred winter visitor - Taken at Pulicat

2) Little Stint (Pic 2) - Dark legs - Prominent White Supercillium - Rufous to Grey streaks in neck & breast - Black to Rufous wing pattern - Widespred winter visitor - Taken at Pulicat

I am off to Kelambakkam this weekend, and lets hope my wader idying improves from the abysmal level it is currently at!

Waders on OMR

Dunlin - Photo by Skandan

Skandan wrote in -

"31st July 2010 we were on our regular birding ride and spotted atleast 15 different waders on OMR. Most of them still holding their *Breeding Plumage*. It was very very surprising to see most them at this time of the year."

More waders - Skandan's gallery.

Collared Pratincole at Siruthavoor

Pratincoles are birds that live on the ground around water bodies and have a lapwing-like stature.

Skandan reports,

The scorching May month heat was about to put an end to our birding for a month.But our birding instincts forced Sripad and me for a drive to Siruthavoor today.

We were lucky once once again with this sighting of "*Collared Pratincole*". They are not so common here.

Oriental Pratincole & Collared Pratincole look very similar.
Collared ones
1) have Tail tip reaching the tip of the Closed wings at rest.
2) have White trailing edge in the primaries (visible in flight)

Collared Pratincole - Photo by Skandan
Collared Pratincole - Photo by Skandan

Pictorial differences between Oriental Pratincole vs Collared Paratincole.

Plenty of plovers

Madras is a warm and hospitable place. The Lonely Planet does not think much of the city, but its one of those places that creep up on you and becomes home.

It seems to have affected the birds as well. A month ago, the MNS e-group was full of distressed emails about the pittas, which were refusing to leave, and quite tragically, dying for their loyalty. (The pittas need to go back to cool climes you see.)

And now, Skandan and his buddies have been lurking around the Adyar estuary and catching these plovers, that are usually only winter visitors to the city, coming in with the music season and the rustle of silks, and leaving well before the summer, mangoes and cotton!

We are well into summer and they are still here, and in breeding plumage to boot.

Grey plover, in breeding plumage. Sighted in Kelambakkam backwaters. Photo by Skandan

The plovers are medium-sized waders - birds that live along the water's edge, with short necks and kind of stubby bills. The non-breeding grey plover is , well, grey! The striking black chest is to attract the ladies!

Lesser Sand plovers, in the sand! Photo by Skandan

The Lesser Sand Plovers were in the sand thankfully, being faithful to their name. And yes, there are Greater Sand Plovers, which are marginally bigger, with slightly longer legs and a more pointy beak.

Click on the picture above and spot the breeding males -the ones with the black mask around the eyes. The morose ones with brown upper necks are the females.

Find the lone Terek sandpiper, among the lesser sand plovers. Photo by Skandan

Its the one with the looong bill! What's it doing hanging out with the plovers, I wonder? The Terek sandpiper's bill is much longer than the common sandpiper, which is quite common. They are endearing birds to watch, slight bobbing up and down, quick stuttering darts along the ground and complete absorption in finding their food!
Pacific golden plovers. Photo by Skandan

Beautiful birds, both in flight and when they are in repose. The golden colours usually catch the evening sunlight beautifully, in the estuary. The striking white markings are prominent in the breeding males.

White-winged tern - breeding plumage. Sighted at Kelambakkam backwaters. Photo by Skandan

I love to watch tern acrobatics over the water's surface. They swoop and glide, and are constantly calling, and are fun to watch through the binoculars. This tern that Skandan has photographed, has a black head only during breeding, and its non-breeding plumage is just white and kind of dull grey or dirty white for the body!

I find the terns very confusing to distinguish during non-breeding, they all look similar!

Skandan and friends also found a Collared Pratincole at Siruthavur.

A Raptor photo essay

Picasa Web Albums - Chennai Birder - Raptors

Some great photos by Skandan.

I always have a problem with raptor ids...they have so many variations that its not funny!

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.

The Black winged stilts at Pallikaranai

The Pallikaranai marsh at Velachery never ceases to amaze me.  People tell me stories of how it was a wetland with scores of birds ... but to me its just Madras' rubbish dump.

And as Madras went through successive summers with poor rain and the wetlands dried, we even decided to build huge buildings in it. And of course the rains came, and oops all the buildings were marooned. So, instead of removing the buildings we now need to drain the marsh don't we?!

The greenies shouted themselves hoarse, in an attempt to reclaim the marsh...and atleast no further development is to happen in the area that has now been declared as protected.

So what's so amazing? Well, quite oblivious to all these political battles are the black-winged stilts, who populate these marshes in their thousands. They take off as a flock, frightened by a marauding marsh harrier, and then land at a safe distance, their long red legs and black wings making them look better in flight than when they are wading in the waters.

Any time you visit the wetlands, these birds are a sure shot.

BWS - Photo by Skandan

And last month, Skandan came across this nesting pair. So, more stilties to follow!

Lets hope that the marshes don't die, and continue to be home to these birds and more.

...And my son could tell his kids, there used to be a garbage dump here, you know.

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..."

The uncommon incident of the Common Crane

The Bharatpur story never seems to end, does it? To start at the beginning, click here.

Apparently, they are common somewhere, but to me and all of us who saw them, they were definitely uncommon and elusive!!

We were hot and sweaty, having pedalled away on the brick-lined, bone-jarring bund bordering the Ghana canal.  The early morning mist and cool air had long gone, and now we were thankful for the shade of the occasional tree that lined the bund, and against which my faithful purple steed  could be rested!

It was our last day at the sanctuary, and I had already seen my first munia ever, a tree full of yellow footed pigeons, and even several black Redstarts.  While the munias would just not sit still as they hopped from twig to ground to bush to twig, the pigeons just sat and stared!  They looked glum and disappointed like a bunch of Congress workers after their party had lost an election!  The redstarts had no time for us as they zipped and flew through the air, and I felt quite dizzy and tired just trying to follow them!

So, I had had my fill of excitement - or so I thought, and was just staring contentedly into the dry grassland, looking at some cattle moving around in a desultory fashion.  But not Divya. Ever vigilant, thats what she is, and she suddenly barked, "Hey Varun, there's some big bird, look past those cows."  So, while I was going, "where, I cant see, oh thats just a calf", etc etc, Varun the sharp-eyed declared that they were Common Cranes.

Inskipp and Salim Ali were consulted, binoculars trained and a consensus was reached. Common Cranes they were.  See that black streak down the face, or is it a white streak on a black face?  But they are not common, I wailed.  So Varun placates me, "They are common in Europe, you see, they are only winter visitors here."  I was still miffed and truculent, and muttered militantly that we should give them our own name, and its not fair, etc etc.  

Anyway, common cranes they were, and a lovely family of four, mum, dad and two teenagers?  Now they were actually more than 600m away, (atleast I think so), and our binocs were at the limit of their capabilities.  Thankfully we had two large gunners with us, who crept a little ahead and got these photos.

Photo by CarthicGrus grus- thats their official name.

Like the Sarus, these too have an extended and elaborate calling and dancing behaviour.

The International Crane Foundation site says:

Mated pairs of cranes, including Eurasian Cranes, engage in unison calling, which is a complex and extended series of coordinated calls. The birds stand in a specific posture, usually with their heads thrown back and beaks skyward during the display. The male always lifts up his wings over his back during the unison call while the female keeps her wings folded at her sides. In Eurasian Cranes the male initiates the display and utters one call for every three female calls. All cranes engage in dancing, which includes various behaviors such as bowing, jumping, running, stick or grass tossing, and wing flapping. Dancing can occur at any age and is commonly associated with courtship, however, it is generally believed to be a normal part of motor development for cranes and can serve to thwart aggression, relieve tension, and strengthen the pair bond.

This calling is seen in several crane types, and I do wish I had witnessed it!

Photo by SkandanWell, I guess I was lucky just to be in the right place at the right time.  After a while, papa crane kept looking watchfully and warily to his right, and then we saw a group of jackals in the grass.

A few minutes later, and the cranes were off, flying away from us, with the long graceful strokes of their wings.  With a wingspan of some 6-7 ft, it was quite a sight to see the four of them, in a similar rhythm, take off and fly in a "V".  It was another of those silence moments, where I was dumbstruck, though Varun kept muttering deliriously, fantastic, fantastic!

As we moved on, our eyes caught another two families of these cranes take to the air!  Where had they been hiding?  We had not noticed them at all!

And so ended the uncommon incident of the Common Crane.

Bharatpur Photo extravaganza

Here are some links to photo albums of MNS members, who have uploaded their choicest (is there such a word?) pictures of our Bharatpur visit.

Carthic's lovely shots of the geese and ducks

Sripad's gallery with great jackal and owl pictures

Skandan's portfolio from Bharatpur and Ranthambore!

Mr Ramanan sends us his photos via email, and so maybe I should develop a special set for his photos?