Weekend birding..

Hello friends,

This is my first attempt of blogging  with some story telling. Although the descriptions here may not be that good,  hope you people like it.

In the morning of first weekend of the new year I decided to go for a birding with my bird specialist friend, colleague Mr. Raghavendra Naik in our campus which is situated at Burnihat, Assam.

View of campus from adjacent hill

To say few words about the campus, it is situated beside Guwahati-Shillong National highway and surrounded by khasi hills which is undergoing immense anthropogenic pressure. In between the campus is a artificial pond which is surrounded by swampy places and hills on either side giving a beautiful habitat for variety of birds.

View of campus

We started our journey around 9am as slowly sunlight showing up resulting in gradual disappearance of mist and cold. Bird activity also increased by that time.








First one to meet in our journey is Black Hooded Oriole(juvenile) which was enjoying fruits of ficus tree which is now in its peak fruiting period.

Black Hooded Oriole(juvenile)

Next sighting was Grey backed Shrike which was perched on electric wire.This species is distributed in Himalayan and north eastern regions of India.

Grey Backed Shrike

By that time, a Cattle Egret which was there in between the bushes around decided to flew away by the disturbance created by us. But not succeeded to avoid capturing in my camera.

Cattle Egret in flight

"See, there is a kingfisher, on that pole.." Raghavendra whispered in my ears. White Throated Kingfisher was there all the time just observing what these fellows are doing.

White Throated Kingfisher

As we walked further on a tree top there were many Yellow footed green pigeons perched. They were so nicely camouflaged to the greenery of the tree that I never able to spot them if my friend was not there. As the sky was very bright, sunlight was coming just behind the tree and all the birds sitting on dark contrast place I didn't got good photos of them.


But while coming back I had a chance to take photograph of one individual which was on ficus tree.

Yellow-Footed Green Pigeon

Next sighting was of a beautiful Common Stonechat which was perched on the hedge surrounding the pond. It was moving vigorously around the bushes nearby, searching something and again coming back to the hedge. We observed it for sometime and finally succeeded in taking photograph and later identifying it.

Common Stonechat

Our next aim was to photograph Oriental Hobby, a raptor which we have been observing from many days. It has a habit of perching on  the tree top and in our campus it usually sighted on the top of  Ceiba pentandra tree. But it was not there at that time. Raghavendra knew another place where it can be found which is near the administrative building.

Oriental Hobby

 We spotted it there exactly as my friend suggested. There were two of them perched on the leafless Gmelina arborea tree, one facing towards us and another in opposite direction.

Oriental Hobby

Finally satisfied by sighting and photographing Oriental Hobby, we moved further in anticipation of signs of Indian Roller/Blue Jay, the bird we have been sighting from the day we came here. It is the state bird of our state Karnataka. Yes, it was there on a Melia azadirach tree nearby.

Indian Roller

We moved further sighting many more birds, but not succeded in taking photographs of them. They are,

• Black Kite
• Pond Heron
• Treepie(maybe Rufous)
• Purple sunbird

 While coming back to our quarters, near the ficus tree again we spotted some more birds.

A beautiful Hill Myna feeding on ficus fruits, which is also known for its good imitating capacity like parakeet.

Hill Myna

Coppersmith Barbet, a small bird which in summer perches on top branches of a tree and starts calling 'tuk.. tuk..' which resembles working sound of coppersmith.

Coppersmith Barbet

Another one is Blue Throated Barbet. This was the first time I was seeing that bird. It is distributed in Himalayan and North-Eastern parts of India.

Blue-Throated Barbet

Though I was not able to photograph every bird we spotted as I was not fast enough to photograph them, it was a great birding session on that day. We able to have a glimpse of bird diversity present in our campus along with documentation with many photographs.
I must appreciate my friend Raghavendra's effort in spotting and identifying birds quickly that helped a lot on that days exercise. 

Thank you for viewing.. hope you enjoyed it..
Regards,
Ganesh Hegde

Note: Gear used - Nikon D90 with Nikkor 55-300mm lens