best birds: Winter India Part 3: Himalayan Foothills

Winter India Part 3: Himalayan Foothills

Arriving at our campsite on the Kosi River, I immediately set my sights on scanning the rocky river bed with my binoculars. Why? To try and spot an elusive Ibisbill. Unfortunately, the elusive Ibisbill remained elusive for the whole trip, although, like the Cheer Pheasant, I never really thought I’d spot one. One thing I did see while scanning was a large white bird flying past – a Common Merganser, quite a rare bird in India as I understand. Later, heading down to the river with our teacher and my friend, I walked onto a bridge and saw a flash of red on a rock face about 15 metres away. “It’s a bloody WALLCREEPER” were the words that popped into my head (though I didn’t say that out-loud, unless everyone else would think I was crazy). Instead, I said “I really need to go over there and look at this really cool bird”, which I did. And boy, are Wallcreepers cool birds!!! This was another I hadn’t really expected to see, but oh well!

After I lost the Wallcreeper, I spent the rest of the afternoon mostly on the river, and ticked off Brown Dipper, Crested Kingfisher, Common Kingfisher, Crested Treeswift, Eurasian Crag Martin and White-browed Wagtail. The next day was all spent relaxing, and again, I spent quite a bit of my time at the river, as did many other people, with a bit of swimming, skipping stones, etc. I added Nepal House Martin, Grey Wagtail, and got more views of Wallcreeper and Brown Dipper. As I headed back up to the campsite, a flash of orange alerted me to what was probably a Blue-capped Rock Thrush, though after an hour of scrambling around in the bushes, I couldn’t resight it. As consolation however, I finally found a pair of Great Tits (a phrase I have been wanting to say for a long time…), a party of Grey-breasted Prinias, and a Grey-capped Pygmy Woodpecker was very polite and sat only a metre from me while it pecked away at a tree for 5 minutes.

The next morning, we were whisked away by jeeps to the town of Ramnagar, or RAMNAGARRRRR as we preferred to call it. This is the gateway to Corbett National Park, where we would spend the next day. Ramnagar had some really good food, and showers, so we had a great time and went out for a substantial dinner. We were picked up at 7:00 the next morning for our safari. One of our guides was quite a birder, so I made sure I got in the jeep with him!

As we drove into the park, we spotted many animals, including Spotted, Sambar and Barking Deer, a Jackal, and a lot of Jungle Babblers. As we were in a jeep, I couldn’t really ask to stop for birds, but as KK (our guide’s nickname) knew I was a birder, he often pointed out the really interesting stuff to me. Before we arrived at a spot to have breakfast he broke suddenly for a woodpecker (not sure which one, I missed it), but what I did see was a Common Green Magpie fly up from the ground into a low tree. Then it disappeared… a very unsubstantial view of such a cool bird. We continued on, and when we got out of the jeep, everything was made better. KK says urgently, “come here, very good bird”. I walk over, asking what it is, to which he replies “Collared Falconet”, and I almost lose my sense of self control and almost have a panic attack when I can’t find it. Then I do, and have awesome views of this very very cool raptor. Even if I saw no other birds for the rest of the trip, I would have been happy with this bird.

On the river behind the breakfast café, I spotted a pair of River Lapwings, and a Black-winged Cuckoo-shrike feeding in a tree. We continued on towards our accommodation for the night, stopping for Tawny Fish Owl, Pallas’s Fish Eagle, Red Junglefowl, a huge flock of Pin-tailed Green Pigeons, and a Gharial (endangered crocodile). The middle of the day was spent resting, and getting our bananas taken by monkeys, before we headed out at 3:00 to attempt to find a tigress and her cubs which had been hanging around. A few Indian Peafowl on the way out was very cool (to see them in their natural habitat and all), but when the deer started giving alarm calls, the tension grew. We stopped and spread out, waiting for at least 30 minutes. An elephant came out of the bushes with people on it, who had just seen the tiger, and said that the cubs were less than 30 metres away under a tree. We waited. Then another jeep pulled up. They waited. And another 2. And then more. Eventually there were 9 jeeps waiting for a tiger to just walk out onto the road. We gave up and drove off after an hour. A Changeable Hawk Eagle preened in a tree, and a Woolly-necked Stork fed near a couple of Hog Deer.

The light was fading and we headed back to the tiger spot. Nothing had happened, and nothing else happened for 30 minutes. Then some alarm calls sounded from a kilometre down the road. Another jeep was already there, and they stood up and looked through there binoculars. There was a tense moment of silence, and then every single jeep (10 by this stage) gunned their engines and raced down the road to the other jeep. Almost every single one got bogged, but almost everyone saw the tiger stalking a small herd of Barking Deer. She stuck her head out of the long grass a few times, then disappeared.

The following morning, we left and headed back to Ramnagar. Not many new birds along the way, but a Jungle Owlet next to the road and some Red-whiskered Bulbuls were quite cool. We collected our bags from the hotel and set off on a very crowded public bus to Haridwar.