Team Black Stork at the Bangalore Bird Race, 160111

Of the 47 teams that took part in the HSBC Bangalore Bird Race, I am only talking about Team Black Stork…. comprised (in alphabetical order) Gayathri, Mani, Saandip, Uma…and me.

We certainly had a wonderful time that day, and we certainly never had any expectations, as bird-sightings are so much a matter of luck!

team blk strk 150111

 

Our list had 123 birds, and I never did photograph most of them. I’m hoping that the others will put up their bird-race photographs up soon! We started at my top favourite birding location, the Bannerghatta Zoo area.

 

A bird that I enjoyed seeing was the handsome

LARGE CUCKOO-SHRIKE:

lrge cck shrk 150111

The Zoo area is particularly good, I find, for flycatchers of all kinds. We sighted this

ASIAN BROWN FLYCATCHER:

asn brwn flctcher 150111

At the edge of crocodile pond near the Herbivore Safari, this

GREY WAGTAIL

hopped along, busily wagging its tail:

gry wgtl 150111

a few

LITTLE CORMORANTS

dried their wings after diving for food:

ltl crmrt 150111

We spent quite a long time watching a pair of

PIED KINGFISHERS

fishing; I managed to get one at rest:

pd kf 150111

a common bird, the

BLACK KITE

sat upon a pole, eating early breakfast:

kite prey 150111

the

PADDYFIELD PIPIT

is always a pretty bird to see!

pfppt 150111

I liked the scenery that included a couple of

RED-WATTLED LAPWINGS:

rw lpwing 150111

Saandip then suggested that we go to the edge of Jigani Lake, quite close to the Zoo area, and off we went, where we saw this lovely

LONG-TAILED SHRIKE:

lt shrk 150111

We then went to Ramnagara, where our raptor sightings were wonderful, including this scene of a

SHAHEEN (PEREGRINE) FALCON

high up on the cliffs:

shn flcn rmng 150111

Though it was the "wrong" time of day, two

LONG-BILLED VULTURES

were already on the cliff-face, and two more came sailing in:

lbv landing 150111

they then proceeded to spread out their wings, we were unable to understand why:

lbv wngs 150111

 

We spent far longer than we should have, watching these majestic birds…but finally, lunch beckoned, and after a "Thatte Idli" lunch at Bidadi, decided to go back to the small birds, and went on to our closing venue, Valley School…and we were not disappointed. We sighted this

BOOTED WARBLER:

btd wrblr 150111

Having run out of time, we decided to head back to the post-race meeting at the Royal Orchid in Manipal Centre, where Prashanth Badrinath (I call him Birdynath!) and Mike Prince were collecting everyone’s logbooks prior to getting to work on them:

br judges 150111

I’ve put up my photos on Facebook

here

…we never had any rare-bird sighting, so were hard put to it to designate a Bird of the Day!

However, it was worth noticing at that at 5pm at Valley School, we were already birding by moonight! 🙂

mnlight br 150111

Let me close with this beautiful view of the main pond in Valley School:

vs mn pnd 150111

It was a tiring but very satisfying day…and we were quite thrilled to find out, later, that we’d actually placed fourth!

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