Fabulous Friday

The lush green valley of Valparai is a good place for wildlife and birding. The morning’s outing gave us a small bird list, but with a couple of “lifers” (birders’ shorthand for seeing a bird for the first time in one’s life). I put together four great sightings in the photos above. Going left to right, top to bottom they are a bull Gaur (also called the Indian Bison Bos gaurus) keeping a wary eye on us, one of the endangered lion-tailed macaques (Macaca silenus, this band feeds on garbage heaps around villages), a juvenile great Hornbill (Buceros bicornis) with its deep calls and immense flapping wings, and the Malabar giant squirrel (Ratufa Indica), not endangered, but rare.