The Nilgiris are wonderful for dedicated bird watchers. We do not count ourselves in this tribe, although The Family always carries a pair of binoculars with her on these trips, and we carry Grimmett’s Guide to Indian Birds to refer to at nights. We also make bird lists, but cannot agree whether to add crows and sparrows to the list. After long arguments, we have come to the considered agreement that we will separate our bird list into two parts:
The usual suspects
- Red-vented Bulbul
- Red-whiskered Bulbul
- Common Myna
- Jungle Myna
- Hill Myna
- Indian Robin
- Oriental Magpie Robin
- Black Drongo
- Blue Rock Pigeon
- Oriental Turtle Dove
- Common sparrow
- Common crow (not so common here)
- Indian pond heron
- Little egret
- Cattle egret
Less common
- Pied Bushchat (in Erivakulam NP)
- Black and Orange Flycatcher (on SH 17, south of Erivakulam)
- Blue Robin (on SH 17, south of Erivakulam)
- Yellow-crowned Woodpecker (in Chinnar WLS)
- Kerala Laughing Thrush (on SH 17, south of Erivakulam)
- Black Bulbul
- Yellow Bulbul
- Raquet-tailed Drongo
- Long-tailed Shrike *
- Brown Shrike
- Small Minivet
- Scarlet Minivet *
- Jungle Babbler
- Scimitar Babbler *
- Malabar Parakeet *
- Purple Sunbird
- Gray Jungle Fowl
- Greater Coucal
- Rufous Treepie
- Indian Cormorant
- Hoopoe
- Common Teal
- Brown-headed Barbet
- Chestnut-headed Bee-eater *
- Malabar Whistling Thrush *
- Velvet-fronted Nuthatch
- Eurasian Blackbird
We’ve moved more birds into the list of common birds. The ones in bold are lifers: our first sightings of these birds. The birds which are starred are ones we had also seen in Valparai. There are surprisingly few in common. In Valparai we went out early every morning, and again in the evening, with a local expert, to look for birds. In Munnar we did nothing of the sort. Our walks through Erivakulam NP and Chinnar WLS were in the middle of the day. In spite of this, we have a longer bird list from Munnar. The difference is just that Valparai is almost entirely tea plantations, whereas there are large forested areas around Munnar. This is an object lesson in how monoculture destroys ecology.
Spotting mammals requires time and tenacity. We were not in Munnar for the wild life. However, some wild life came to us. I’ve already talked of the Nilgiri Tahr in Erivakulam NP. Apart from multiple sightings of this rather endangered animal we saw two grizzled giant squirrels during our walk through Chinnar WLS. These are rare animals, confined to a few forests, but easily visible in their habitats. We came across a few Gaur, but nothing else. An elephant had passed across the path we took through Chinnar WLS, as we could see from the pug mark pointed out by our guides. One of the oddest things we saw were the humerus of a Gaur laid out next to the same path (see the photo here).
