Female Bar-headed Geese ‘79′ on 3/12/09 at the Eastern Range,Kaziranga National Park

According to Martin, there weren’t any cases of wild birds dying due to Influenza before 2005. But in 2005 there was a outbreak in wild birds in Qinghai, China where nearly 5000 birds died out of which 50% were the Bar-headed Geese and the rest included the Ruddy Shelducks, Gulls etc. So they decided to study the migration pattern of the birds since there is high possibility that these long distance migratory birds could be carrying the influenza virus in them. So they started using the Neck Collaring technique where they marked the bird to track their migration. Neck Collaring, he said could be used for most birds like Swan and Geese which had a longer neck but couldn’t be used to ducks because that could be obstacle for their preening. They choose Mongolia as a place to start with because it was a place where they could see a lot of these birds and there was not much poultries around that these wild birds could come in contact with. So they went out in the dark, took one of the birds in a large group and collared them. Even the marking numbers were designed in such a way there would be no scope for ambiguity when the bird was finally tracked somewhere. A lot of interesting results of the collared Bar-headed Headed Geese have come by since then. There have been numerous sightings of the bird while it was wintering in India esp Karnataka, Maharashtra, Andhra Pradesh and from North-East too. There have been 40 re-sightings with 20 individual sightings until now. There is a certain bird which was tagged in Mongolia and has been tracked in Karnataka for 2 years now and again back in Mongolia with the same family after the Indian winter.

We (Ashwini Bhat, Adithya UN, Konwar and yours truly) had a sighting of a Female Bar-headed Geese ‘79′ on 3/12/09 at the (26.6826, 93.5466)Eastern Range of Kaziranga National Park. It was tagged at Sharga Nuur, Bulgan aimag on 14 July 2009. Sharga Nuur is a few miles north of Khunt Nuur, Mongolia. This was out of the hundreds of Bar-headed Geese that we saw there.

Martin also spoke about the Vulture study and the conservation methods adopted for saving the vulture including the concept of Vulture Restaurants where they work with the local community to feed vultures and also promote eco-tourism around it. He then spoke about the Wildlife trade and how human can be prone to deadly diseases due to wildlife trade. He said that Govt and the policy makers would understand it better if it is put forward as a national health issue rather than a wildlife issue. The audience asked a few interesting questions too. One of them if he was really sure that wild birds could get influenza from the domestic birds to which Martin replied that it was a conclusion based on several reports and studies and not something for which they can come out with a proof. It was interesting talk even though I thought he would go a little deeper into the collar programme. Probably given the time, he had too much to cover in a single talk.

Location: Yellamma Lake, NH4, KR Puram, Bangalore

The lake looked very huge on Google Maps. After getting detailed directions from Chandrashekar Bandi who had first reported about the Northern Shovelers on BNGbirds, we reached the lake. The lake is just by the National Highway 4 but the birds didn’t seem to be near the road. So as per his directions, we went through the other side of the lake by passing through a small village. This time it was a lake on one side and uncultivated village fields on the other side which had reeds. We walked along the bund to the end point and there we saw the thousands of shovelers. It gives you such a high to so see so many of them there. There is human habitation all around the lake. Villagers were happily washing clothes and neither the shovelers nor the villagers seemed to have been bothered by each other.

Northern Shoveler – male in the front

We were watching them for a while trying to get a good view of them and also trying to see if there are any other species of birds there. It always seemed to us that we were seeing a lot of kites. Suddenly a Black Kite like creature came flying towards them and all shovelers took off at once. It was an amazing sighting to see all of them taking off at once. The pictures made me realise that it was the female Marsh and not the Black Kite. There were a few Spot-billed Ducks too flying across.

Going off

The female Marsh Harrier which chased away the shovelers

Spot-billed Ducks

Now that the shovelers had flown far away, we decided to explore the other side of the bund. We saw Yellow Wagtails in plenty on the bund. There were a couple of unidentified warblers, lots and lots of Zitting Cisticolas too. But there were a lot of “Sitting Shitticolas” too which was the reason why I was very scared about getting off the bund. While we were watching these small birds, a Male Marsh Harriers flew past us and our jaws dropped with an awe. The same Marsh Harrier then flew across to the other side of the lake. There were a lot of Barn Swallows too. Birding around the reeds yielded us some good sightings including the multiple sightings of the Marsh Harrier pair. After spending some time there, we headed back to the Shoveler point seeing them back at the same spot where we had seen them earlier. There were Common Coots, Common Sandpiper and a few other birds too. The splashing of the water by the coots is really a wonderful sighting.

Male Marsh Harrier

Female Marsh Harrier

Female Marsh Harrier

Northern Shoveler again

Marsh Harrier being chased by a kite

Northern Shoveler again

Common Sandpiper

Northern Shoveler again

Common Coot

Coot splash

Coot splash

Kite chasing a bird

Black-winged Stilts

Tawny pipit?

We decided to explore the other side of the lake too. As we were walking, we saw the Black-winged Stilts just taking off, Female Siberian Stonechat, Common Sandpiper, Wood Sandpiper and a raptor soaring high up in the air which could have been the Indian Spotted Eagle.

Black-winged Stilts

Spot-billed Ducks

Green Sandpiper

Green Sandpiper

Common Sandpiper

Probably an Indian Spotted Eagle

Black-winged Stilts

Female Siberain Stonechat

While we were wrapping up the birding and heading back home, we saw hundred of Barn Swallows sitting on the wire just near the lake. It looked like as if they were at the Republic day parade. Many thanks to Deepa, Abhijit Menon-Sen and Garima Bhatia for all the IDing help.

Barn Swallows

This one is a Female Marsh Harrier. Typically you’d see their wings in ‘V’ shape in flight. The white markings on their shoulders makes it easy to identify them. The open fields near the Yellamma lake had a lot of harrier activity. They are migrants to India.

Scientists said the Moon will be at its brightest and biggest because its orbit is an ellipse with one side being 50,000 km closer to the Earth than the other. Saturday’s full moon will be around 15% bigger and 30% brighter as compared to other full moons.

That one hour of birding made our day. It was something more than what we could wish for. Soon after this trip, I was off to Kaziranga and I haven’t been able to find time to post these pics. Today I realised that I had lost all of those harrier pics while formatting my system recently. Anyway, I can still remember every moment of that evening :-)

White-naped Woodpecker Chrysocolaptes festivus

Golden Oriole Oriolus oriolus

Purple-rumped Sunbird

Cerulean

  
L: A Garden lizard feeding on top of a tree R: bark of a tree

Baronet

Yellow Pansy

Common Sailor

Blue Rock-thrush (Female)

Blue Rock-thrush (Female)

Stripe-necked Mongoose

Crimson Rose

Location: enroute to Manchinbele

Apartment complex of the Tawny-bellied Babbler

On the look out for food

Finally, time for breakfast