Zone of silence

After lunch we set off to a part of the Keoladeo National Park which we hadn’t seen before. There were few people here in the lazy afternoon. In these flooded fields nature was also at rest. A Nilgai (Boselaphus tragocamelus) rested in the shade of a tree. A Small Blue Kingfisher (Alcedo atthis) sat on a branch above it. Around them was a tremendous variety of waterfowl.

At the end of a long branch overlooking a deeper part of this water world, an Indian Darter (Anhinga melanogaster) spread out its wings to dry.

In the water nearby the spectacular Red-crested Pochards (Netta rufina) made deep dives next to some very fashionably black Common Coots (Fulica atra),

Elsewhere in the shallows flocks of Greylag Geese (Anser anser) shared space with Mallard Ducks (Anas platyrhynchos). Males of ducks are usually more colourful than females. The female is the primary caregiver for chicks, and, since ducks mostly nest on the ground, her colour is meant as camouflage.

When I zoomed out a bit I could see that this was part of a larger mixed flock. The Family probably has a record of all the waterfowl in this larger bunch, but in this photo I can easily see the distinctive white stripe down the head and neck of Northern Pintails (Anas acuta).

Zooming back even more, I could see the edge of human activity, in the form of cows wandering in to browse at the edge of the waterworld. Cows can sometimes step unwittingly on nests of birds, crushing eggs. This level of human interference is unavoidable in India. Bharatpur’s Keoladeo NP has done wonders for conservation within these human constraints.

The Drying Darter

Although the Indian Darter (Anhinga melanogaster) is a common sight across India and further south east, down to Brunei, it is classified as near threatened in the IUCN red list. When you look at the reasons, they are the same depressing lot: habitat loss due to human activity such as damming of rivers and creation of other water management systems, pollution and effluents. Like much of threatened wildlife today, they are accidental road-kills on the way to progress. It is nice to have a place like Bharatpur’s Keoladeo National Park where you can forget these problems for a day or two and look at darters in water.

I stood next to a small body of water and watched one dive into the water, for a while only its long neck could be seen at the apex of a clean wake. Could this be the reason they are also called snakebirds? Then it was gone, completely submerged. It had turned under water, because it came up in a completely different direction, near a dead tree with only a few branches jutting out of the water. It hadn’t caught a fish, so I couldn’t get a photo of it tossing its catch in the air before catching it in its beak, like a chef with a pizza. Instead I admired the way it managed to camouflage itself against the branches.

It doesn’t need to. It is large enough that adults don’t have natural predators among birds (chicks can be taken by raptors). It is same from most other hunters because it mostly nests and roosts in trees sticking out of the water, like the perch it now pulled itself up to. I had a wonderful view of the large webbed feet with which it grasped the branches. It craned its neck to look around. Why is it so alert to its surroundings when it is out of the water? It is certainly not looking for things to eat, since its food is all below the surface. I keep wondering whether it has predators.

You usually spot a darter by its very characteristic pose, when it perches on a tree or sits at the edge of water with its wings spreads out to dry. A sight like this always raises the question why a duck does not need to dry its feathers whereas cormorants and darters do. It was once believed that this was due to special properties of a “preening oil” which covers the surface of feathers. In the 1940s textile industries did some research on the waterproofing properties of this oil, and quickly realized that it is no better than commercially available waxes and polishes. Today we understand that it is the spacing and width of individual barbs in feathers which determine whether they get wet when immersed in water. There are conflicting demands on feathers from a bird’s ability to fly and its ability to resist wetting, and different genus of waterbirds have responded to these conflicts in different ways. There is more subtlety to the darter’s characteristic posture than appears at first glance!

Birds of Ranthambore

Any place in north India is full of migratory birds at this time of the year, and a forest with lakes is a birdwatcher’s paradise. Unfortunately, in Ranthambore most tourists, and every guide, spend most of their time driving around at high speed looking for tigers. As a result, you tend to miss the birds.

The Family, who is a much better birder than me, threw up her hands and refused to look at birds. I was left on my own. I’m a terrible spotter, and certainly from a speeding jeep I could not see any of the little warblers I could hear. The only small bird I saw was very distinctive, and I could later identify it as a common chiffchaff. This was a lifer. Everything else I identified was something I’d already seen before.

The one bit of birdwatching where local expertise is really helpful is in spotting owls. Typically, these nest in the same place over years. You could spend a long time looking for the nest, or ask a local. One of our guides knew where to find spotted owlets (above) and a oriental Scops owl. That was handy.

Darter

1. Peacock
2. Jungle babbler
3. Yellow-legged buttonquail
4. Red-vented bulbul
5. Rose-ringed parakeet
6. Common myna
7. Bank myna
8. Pied myna
9. Spotted dove
10. Eurasian collared dove
11. Common drongo
12. White-bellied drongo
13. Indian magpie robin

Purple Heron

1. Indian roller bird
2. Rufous treepie
3. Pied kingfisher
4. White-breasted kingfisher
5. Bay-backed shrike
6. Southern grey shrike
7. Red-wattled lapwing
8. Common cormorant
9. Great cormorant
10. Indian darter
11. Purple heron
12. Common moorhen
13. Eurasian coot

Crested serpent eagle

1. Black-winged stilt
2. Black-shouldered kite
3. Shikra
4. Black-headed ibis
5. Woolly-necked stork
6. Yellow-footed green pigeon
7. Oriental Scops owl
8. Spotted owlet
9. Crested serpent eagle
10. Common pochard
11. Common teal
12. * Common chiffchaff

One sighting that momentarily energized The Family was of a black headed Ibis. She sat up, looked around and spotted a lump on a tree. We looked closer, and it turned out to be the woolly necked stork which you see in the photo below.

From our speeding car we saw a mass of small birds flitting above a field next to the Jaipur-Indore road. They were probably Dusky crag martins, but it was hard to be sure. In far corners of some of my photos there are two more birds: perhaps the Eurasian wigeon and the Northern pintail, but they can be barely made out. I won’t count them in the list.