Feathered Bipeds & Me.
Monday, November 01, 2004
Birding at valley school
Indra obviously has something against us birders. Having yet another long weekend lined up, we started making great birding plans(Birding trek to kodchadri, etc). But, come friday & Indra seemed to have become jealous. He sends his army of clouds and blocks out the skies. Must have been a sudden depression in the bay of bengal that gave us a "depression".
Saturday went unbirded, thanks to unwelcome cloud cover & other personal work. So we decided, come what may, we will bird on sunday morning. With the castle-in-the-air kodchadri plans being brought down like cards due to the weather, we picked to make a morning trip to valley school.
We left at 8am from BTM. The cloud cover was strong, but the drizzle was very weak enough to give me enough courage to take my equipment out. The activity was good, with flocks of rufous-bellied warblers, yellow-eyed babblers, redvented bulbuls & chestnut tailed starlings loitering around some lantana bushes. But unfortunately couldnt shoot any of them.
As we proceeded to the fallow land adjoining the farmed plot, i came across a small garbage dump which promised to give me superb indian robin shots, cos a pair were frequenting a couple of small perches among the paper/plastic garbage, inspite of my presence. But they wouldnt sit still enough for me to focus &
shoot. A pair of pied bushchats also later joined, and i managed a couple of shots of a female perched on an outstretched bare twig.
A couple of long-tailed shrikes(aka rufous backed shrike) were also seen in the area. The calls of blyth's/booted warblers were audible, though none dared to venture out into the open. Larks were seen doing their floating display.
Patience ran out by 11-11:30am, by which the clouds showed no sign of giving way for sunshine. As murphy's law goes, if there is anything that can screw up birding, it will happen. We mumbled "by tuesday, blue skies will be back". But, fortunately it came a day early. Monday afternoon, back were the blue skies, inviting me to go birding somewhere, but lost sleep from sunday night lured me to a comfy monday siesta.
I hope Indra stays at home next weekend! :-)
Job
Saturday went unbirded, thanks to unwelcome cloud cover & other personal work. So we decided, come what may, we will bird on sunday morning. With the castle-in-the-air kodchadri plans being brought down like cards due to the weather, we picked to make a morning trip to valley school.
We left at 8am from BTM. The cloud cover was strong, but the drizzle was very weak enough to give me enough courage to take my equipment out. The activity was good, with flocks of rufous-bellied warblers, yellow-eyed babblers, redvented bulbuls & chestnut tailed starlings loitering around some lantana bushes. But unfortunately couldnt shoot any of them.
As we proceeded to the fallow land adjoining the farmed plot, i came across a small garbage dump which promised to give me superb indian robin shots, cos a pair were frequenting a couple of small perches among the paper/plastic garbage, inspite of my presence. But they wouldnt sit still enough for me to focus &
shoot. A pair of pied bushchats also later joined, and i managed a couple of shots of a female perched on an outstretched bare twig.
A couple of long-tailed shrikes(aka rufous backed shrike) were also seen in the area. The calls of blyth's/booted warblers were audible, though none dared to venture out into the open. Larks were seen doing their floating display.
Patience ran out by 11-11:30am, by which the clouds showed no sign of giving way for sunshine. As murphy's law goes, if there is anything that can screw up birding, it will happen. We mumbled "by tuesday, blue skies will be back". But, fortunately it came a day early. Monday afternoon, back were the blue skies, inviting me to go birding somewhere, but lost sleep from sunday night lured me to a comfy monday siesta.
I hope Indra stays at home next weekend! :-)
Job
posted by Job K Joseph, 9:48 PM