Winter birding

Winter is naturally the best time for birding, with all fliers deserting the colder regions and flocking closer to the equator. You not only get the wintering birds, as they put on holiday weight, but you also get the nesting local birds. I missed this season this year, because I was not quick enough in the dip between waves of the pandemic to make the January and February forays. So I’ll spend a day of nostalgia about one of the best winter birding destinations in India: Keoladeo National Park in Bharatpur. Whether you just want to try out birding or are a serious birder, or like me, are somewhere in between, don’t miss this. The wetland (photo above) has something for everyone.

Dalmatian pelicans (Pelecanus crispus) took off through the air, shedding drops of water as they flew, while I stood by the marsh with my camera. The afternoon’s air was hazy with moisture, and a shower later would freshen it up. These are the world’s largest pelicans, with an average body mass only slightly less than that of condors from the Andes, and their wingspans are twice a man’s height. As the world’s climate warms, their habitat is spreading. Hopefully this might compensate somewhat for the enormous loss in habitat during the 20th century.

That photo of painted stork (Mycteria leucocephala) flying overhead recalls my first attempt at birding. The Family had always wanted to start birding, and in the last year of the previous century we took a trip to Bharatpur. Just inside the gate, on a side path next to a marsh, we stopped and looked at a stork flying overhead. “Painted storks,” a voice told us. It belonged to one of the naturalist guides who gave us a gentle introduction to birding, although we hadn’t hired his services for the day. We tried to look him up on our second visit, but twenty years after he must have changed as much as the three musketeers.

We were in the company of one of India’s most well known popularizers of the art of bird watching, luckily. As we watched these unfledged chicks of the painted stork, he pointed out the dead bird stuck to the bottom of the nest; an egret. Painted storks eat frogs and snakes. Could this smaller bird have been a meal for the chicks? Some of the locals have taken on the combination job of a rickshaw driver and bird guide. The ones we talked to hadn’t noticed. The park is large, and hard to walk through. You can hire bicycles at the gate, or the services of one of these local guides. They are good at their work, and, unless you are already a competent birder, worth taking along.

Later Adesh spotted an Eurasian Eagle-Owl (Bubo bubo). I wouldn’t have been able to tell the difference between that and the Indian Eagle-Owl (B. bengalensis) in the field; I need to look at photos and compare them closely with field guides. But the call and the generally larger size and lighter colour of B. bubo are sufficient for an expert to tell the difference. Nearby there was a nest, and after a wait we saw two chicks looking out from it. It was really hard to get a shot through the intervening branches and twigs. I guess the owls did not want to nest in a clearly visible spot.

Bharatpur is wonderfully located. You can easily drive to Fatehpur Sikri, and, if you are interested, to the National Chambal Sanctuary. Apart from the gharials (Gavialis gangeticus) which are the main species under protection here, you can also see Indian skimmers (Rynchops albicollis), also known as scissor-bills for their remarkable crossed beaks. Since I’ve written about them before, I’ll end this post with a shot of rose-ringed parakeets (Psittacula krameri) braking to a halt in their flights near a nest inside the supporting pillar of the bridge on the river Chambal.

Winter rain

A very hard afternoon shower in Bharatpur’s Keoladeo National Park had left roads soaked. At one end of the road you could see a single rickshaw coming. Local investment in tourism takes many forms in this area. The most visible are probably the many hotels which line the approach to the main gates of the sanctuary. But another wonderful form of investment are these rickshaws. Many national parks have cars with trained guides. Here they are replaced by rickshaws. The people driving them are trained naturalists. The best have wide knowledge not only of birds, but also the trees and herbs in this area. They are also enormously curious if they find that you know something better than them, and try to gain as much out of conversations as they can. You could hire bicycles to ride into the sanctuary, but it is good to take the rickshaws at least once. Not only do you support the local economy, you also get to spend a long time talking to a local. That’s always something I look forward to when I travel.

Pangshura

In my earlier visit to Bharatpur’s Keoladeo National Park, I was so overwhelmed by the sheer number and variety of birds that I’d not registered how many other animals find a home in this wetland reserve. I don’t know much about turtles at all, and the variety here is a good place to start figuring out how to identify fresh-water turtles. The Indian Roofed Turtle (Pangshura tecta) is one of the easiest. I’ve seen them being sold as pets, but the individual you see in the photo was larger than the ones I’ve seen in shops.

I had to learn two technical words in order to start identifying turtles: the carapace is the hard shell on top, and the plastron is the hard underside of the shell. The plastron of the Indian Roofed Turtle is a yellow-orange in colour with the irregular black spots which you see in the photo. An additional identifier is that the neck has longitudinal yellow streaks, which you can see in spite of the fact that the neck is not fully extended. Since females grow to be larger in this species, this individual is likely to have been one.

A turtle’s life is slow and measured: slow maturity, taking 10-10 years, long and modestly fecund life, so that enough offspring are produced to fit into what were historically stable ecosystems. I’m not sure what the lifespan of this species is, but it is unlikely to be much longer or shorter than the usual lifespans of Indian turtles, which is about 60 years.

Rosy Pelican

Once upon a time the Rosy Pelican beer was quite common. I would look at the very rosy pelican on the label and wonder about the bird. It didn’t occur to me then that one did not have to travel far to see those birds. There was an attempt to revive the beer again in the early years of this century before it followed the Dodo into oblivion. I was reminded of this old favourite amongst lagers as I stood by the ponds of Bharatpur’s Keoladeo National Park and watched flocks of Rosy Pelicans (aka Great White Pelicans, Pelecanus onocrotalus)

Unlike the very similar looking Dalmatian Pelican, the Rosy Pelican is not a loner. Apart from the fact that they are gregarious, I eventually found that the easiest way to tell them apart is to look at the eyes. The Rosy has a large pink patch around the eyes, as you can see in these photos, whereas the Dalmatian has round yellow eyes and no eye patch. In size they seemed about similar. The bills are also similar (except that the Dalmatian’s may be more orange in colour than that of the Rosy). The Rosy Pelican is named for the yellowish or pinkish feathers of the neck and breast, a feature which I found needs mellow light to see clearly. The really major difference is that the Rosy Pelican is one of the decreasing number of species which are not yet endangered.

Earlier in the day I’d seen a solitary pelican foraging in a body of water, accompanied by a Bronze-winged Jacana (Metopidius indicus). It seems that Pelicans catch more fish with less effort when they are alone, but, paradoxically, prefer to be in large flocks. In their breeding grounds in Africa, Pelicans may take 10-25% of the stocks of fish in lakes, setting up potential conflict with humans. The rosy colour of the neck feathers apparently comes from ferric oxide in the silt in its African habitats. This may partly explain why the individuals I saw had paler feathers than in the stock photos one sees. The label on the beer bottle definitely took artistic license with reality.

These birds are good fliers, migrating every year from their main breeding grounds in Africa to winter in India, stopping to feed multiple times on the way. When you see them on the wing, they seem to glide effortlessly, moving their wings with great economy. On our last evening in Bharatpur, as we passed the huge marsh where I’d seen Cheetal and Pelicans foraging together I had the exciting view of a flock of Rosy Pelicans taking off. As they fly, the black edges of the wings can be seen clearly. When the wings are folded, these black primary feathers are hidden under the whites of the remainder of the wing. They took off with great flaps of their wings, but once they leveled off in flight, I was impressed by the elegant economy of their motion.

Strange Fruit

As we entered Bharatpur’s Keoladeo National Park early one morning we looked up to find a tall ficus tree bearing what looked like large green fruit. Wild figs are usually small and red, so this deserved a closer look. It wasn’t fruits of course, it was a flock of Yellow-footed Green Pigeons (Treron phoenicopterus) at their characteristic early morning foraging. These birds are critical in dispersing the seeds of many trees. In a good forest like this, seeds of trees have been observed to be widely dispersed by these pigeons. A study found that in degraded forests, when the population of these fruit-eaters decreases, the seeds remains in the neighbourhood of the parent.

There was a bit of an early morning chill in the air, and my layers felt a little restrictive on my arms as I raised my camera to take photos. The light was wonderful after the shower of the previous evening. When I zoomed in to individual birds I could see that they had fluffed up their feathers to trap a layer of warm air inside. I’ve seldom seen these pigeons looking so nearly spherical.

These green pigeons are widespread across India, and as far east as Vietnam, as a result of which IUCN classes it as being of least concern for conservation efforts. Nevertheless, there are widespread reports of habitat degradation, and a census is probably called for. After the big shower the previous evening we had seen some of these green pigeons in the neighbourhood of the same tree, looking extremely bedraggled. It is strange that there seem to be no studies of the genetics of this widespread species, in spite of the fact that multiple subspecies cohabit within its geographical spread, and that there is no evidence of mixing of the subspecies. We don’t really know whether Maharashtra’s state bird is a single species or a species complex.

Do you find Dalmatian Pelicans in Dalmatia?

I understand that the pelicans named after the Dalmatian coast of Croatia have not been seen there since the 1950s, and may be considered to be locally extinct. I was not aware of its immense population crash in the previous century when I admired this lone Dalmatian Pelican (Pelecanus crispus). When The Family called out to me, I came running with my camera ready, but I caught the featured photo seconds after a fish had disappeared into its gullet. There is really no understanding of why there was a major drop in the population of one of the largest freshwater birds in the world, but it now has only two breeding populations: a very small one in Mongolia and another larger one somewhat further west in Russia. The ones I saw in Bharatpur’s Keoladeo National Park were winter migrants.

I read the usual stories of hunting (mainly in Mongolia), habitat destruction by draining of swamps (mainly in Russia), and widespread disturbance of nests due to human activity having pushed it into the near-threatened category of the IUCN red list. But interestingly, there have been many investigations in their mysterious decline. It seems that intense parasite infestation is one reason. This was found in other pelican species too. Current thinking rates this as a more significant factor than chemical pollution. This kicked off studies of parasite epidemics and climate change, since the realization that the immune systems of host birds may be stressed in warmer climates.

If you thought that the end result is the disappearance of this species, you could be wrong. It seems that 6000 to 8000 years ago, when the temperatures were about 2 degrees Celsius warmer than today (a time called the Holocene temperature maximum), these pelicans could be found as far north as Denmark. This could happen again, as animals move to parts of the globe more suited to their lifestyles. As the earth warms, egrets have begun nesting and breeding in England in this decade. Strange to think that the tropical birders’ paradise we watched could be in northern Europe in a century.

Splash!

On late winter afternoons Keoladeo National Park in Bharatpur looks beautiful and calm. It is a lovely time to be outside, watching shadows lengthen slowly over still waters. The Family scanned the surroundings; she’s very good at spotting hidden birds. I am visually lazier, looking at open spaces, attention on obvious things like that huge tree jutting out of a little islet in the pond. I wondered whether the tree created the islet or it sprouted on an already existing mound. The green moss on the blue water looked nice, so I raised my camera to take a photo.

One edge of the island was crowded with Common Coot (Fulica atra), which are highly visible winter migrants because of their distinctive white bills. You can see them in flocks like this, or paddling singly or in pairs in ponds across India in this season. It seems that they are extremely territorial and aggressive in their breeding range in the northern latitudes, so I find it a puzzle that they flock together like this while they winter in India. The answer, it seems, is in the cost of vigilance. Watching out for predators takes time away from other activities. Many eyes watching out would improve the ability of flocks to feed better, even with more competition for food due to flocking at the same place. The island also had other birds; you can see a Watercock (Gallicrex cinerea) near the edge of the frame.

At this time of the afternoon the birds are quite active, probably getting a large meal before settling in for the night. I tried to get extreme close ups, but the level of activity was so high that the birds kept disappearing under water leaving only large splashes on the surface. I’ve often seen long leaves hanging from the bills of coots when they come up again. It seems that they feed on leaves and seeds more often than on invertebrates. When I found this I wondered whether they can be as bad as some more common herbivores, which can denude a landscape if their numbers increase. Very often, when you ask a question someone else has asked it before. So I could get an immediate answer: no. Good to know that this abundant and un-endangered bird is not the cause of the disappearance of other species. You can say that in this respect they are pleasantly inhuman.

Ibis Ibis and Ibis

Of the three different kinds of Ibis you can see see in India, the one I’m most familiar is the Black-headed Ibis (Threskiornis melanocephalus), which inhabits the tidal marshlands around Mumbai. That’s why it was nice to visit the Keoladeo National Park in Bharatpur where I could see all three kinds present in India (there are 28 different species of Ibis in the world!). This is not the breeding season for any of them, so the adult birds which you see here are in their non-breeding plumage. The Black-headed Ibis in the featured photo stood out of the marsh-land vegetation which it sat on. I watched as it groomed itself carefully. The breeding populations of this bird are mainly in India, although migrants are found in various parts of Asia, including a population as far north as Manchuria. In spite of its distribution, the worldwide population is decreasing, and the bird is now classed as near-threatened.

Nearby, a Glossy Ibis (Plegadis falcinellus) poked around in the shallow waters, looking for food. These birds mainly breed over most of Africa, but are extensive migrants to India, and can be found also in parts of the Middle East, Central Asia and Southern Europe. They are unlikely to be fussy eaters, and probably feed on different molluscs and insects when they travel. A study in Spain, where a breeding colony has recently been established, found that during the non-breeding season they poke around in paddy fields and eat waste rice.

I came across this Red-naped Ibis (Pseudibis papillosa) on a visit to the nearby Chambal Bio-reserve, and took this photo from a passing boat. The curved bills of Ibis are used to feel out the mud under water to find food, so they are called tactile foragers. Red-naped Ibis breed only in India, and do not seem to be reported outside this geographical area. With constant degradation of wetlands, they are now found in all kinds of microhabitats, waste water and garbage dumps, as often as their natural habitats of fresh-water wetlands and grassland. If Ibis Ibis and Ibis were a law firm, I’m almost certain they would sue us for muscling in on their living space.

Rocky python

No, definitely not Monty. The large snakes that I saw in Keoladeo National Park were the non-venomous Indian Rock Python (Python molurus). There was quite a population of them around. I was most surprised by the one up in a tree. Had it gone up there to look for nesting birds? Apparently they’ll eat any animal, but have a slight preference for mammals. Perhaps because you can eat mammals without having to climb trees or fly. They are practically comatose after a meal. We saw one at the side of a road. It looked dead, but after some time it moved slightly. Only then I realized that there was a bulge a little way below its jaws, meaning it had just eaten.

Elsewhere I saw one slowly emerge from a burrow (they are known to take over abandoned burrows of other animals) and crawl away towards a thicket. It moved very slowly, and with only minor undulations. This was a large animal, easily half again as tall as me, so likely to be an adult. They lack eardrums, so we could talk as much as we wanted without disturbing the animal. However, they feel vibrations through the ground, and therefore are sensitive to movements. The fact that this one crawled away from us could mean that it had detected our footsteps or impatient shuffling. They are quite shy, and will try to flee if approached.

Interestingly, someone has studied their social behaviour. it was found that the males have a simple dominance hierarchy with different individuals strictly ranked. Social hierarchies are used by many animals to defend territory or mating rights, often without actually fighting. Some time ago I’d seen two male nilgai establish a hierarchy without any contact. Apparently pythons are less adept at such conflict avoidance, and have to fight to establish dominance. Given how few there are, it is something that I don’t think I’ll ever see.

Pythons branched away from other snakes about a 150 million years ago, but share with many other snakes the ability to sense infrared using something called a pit organ (you can see it in the two photos of python heads above). What sets the rock python apart from its other cold-blooded cousins is that the female can control its body temperature when incubating eggs. A classic study found that it does so by rhythmic contraction of muscles to generate heat. These fascinating creatures are now classed as near threatened by IUCN, which means that it is slowly being squeezed out of existence by our need for space. How many more human generations will see them before they go the way of the dodo?

A small flash of blue

Alcedo atthis
Had laryngitis
When asked why it sat on dry branches, it said “I don’t have a clue.
Is it because I’m feeling small and blue?”

An instant gratification from getting a monster zoom is that one of my first hundred photos was that of a Small Blue Kingfisher (Alcedo atthis). This is one of the large clade of kingfishers seen in India. They like to sit on exposed branches, constantly surveying the water below them, making occasional dives to pick up food. As a result they are easy to photograph if you have the right equipment. Since they are shy of people, it is also hard to get a good photo without one of these monster cameras. I had to move on before it turned its back to me to give me a view of its fantastic electric blue feathers. Here you see it bobbing its head to gauge the distance to a possible prey. The fish must have dived immediately, so I didn’t get to take a photo of a kingfisher eating.