Rosy Starlings

After being skunked on a species that was listed as common on the site checklist for the past four weeks, I finally found Rosy Starlings at Karaivetti today. As a matter of fact, I found three flocks today totaling 78 birds. Apparently the old adage “when it rains it pours” holds true here in south India! The opening photo was taken this past weekend near Calimere where Rosy Starlings were quite numerous. This was the 176^th species that I’ve observed here at the sanctuary of the 208 species that have ever been recorded.

Relton’s son, Alan who is a first year Zoology student at Bishop Heber College in Trichy has decided to skip classes for several days and accompany me on the survey. Today he took great pleasure in the close-up looks we got of a Baillon’s Crake that had eluded his dad last week. We also saw over 380 Bar-headed Geese today, but I was unable to locate the wayward greylag among them. The rest of our count was rather uneventful, we did have more flocks of shorebirds depart and give us flybys than normal (11 Marsh Sandpipers, 25 Common Greenshanks, 9 Black-tailed Godwits, and 5 Little Stints). While investigating the edge of several reedbeds I noticed a nest in the nearby scrub with two eggs whose tenants were given away by the agitated pair of Ashy-crowned Sparrow Larks (male below) that were nearby. I haven’t found that many nests thus far, but I’ve seen a fair number of young birds and adults carrying food or nesting material.

On the return trip to Pullambadi I was amused to watch in my rearview mirror as Alan attempted to overtake a gravel truck that I had already passed only to have his moped max out at the same speed the truck was going. His moped also doesn’t have rearview mirrors, so he hadn’t realized that a bus had been rapidly closing in on him! He definitely looked like a small fish in a big pond sandwiched between those two large vehicles! He safely was able to get back to the left and allowed the bus to pass, no worries.

The children at the school here have become sufficiently accustomed to my presence that they are now calling out my name every chance that they get. My name is typically pronounced here as ‘shohn’ – lacking the ‘w’ that isn’t represented in the spelling, hence confusing for most here. Whenever I respond to my name being called it is 9/10 to get only a “hi” as they aren’t confident enough in their English to say more than this. But they definitely want me to know that they know my name!

The AAA Indian Experience

Today marked the first unforeseen event of my stay here. The rear tire on the moped began to lose air at a rapid rate as I was making my way around the edge of Karaivetti Lake on my way to the first stop. I got off the bike to avoid further damage to the tire and rim and walked it up to a shaded area where a small road intersected with the road around the lake. I called my host, Mr. Devadass to see what the best thing for me to do. Since it was totally flat, he decided to send two of the men who work for the school out on a motorcycle with tools so they could detach the wheel and take it to the nearest repair shop and bring it back so it could be ridden back to the school.
I then conducted as much of the count as I could on foot while I waited for help to arrive. I saw many more songbirds today since I was on foot in between the locations where I normally stop on the bike. Probably the best bird of the day though was a subadult Watercock that I flushed out of the edge of some rice paddies. The Watercock is closely related to both rails and gallinules and shares many of the attributes of both. It actually resembles the yellow rail that is in America in its subadult plumage, the adult is all dark with a red beak. Other than that, most of the birds that I saw today were fairly standard, I did see a small flock of Northern Pintail and Spot-billed Ducks, surprisingly this was the first time I’ve seen either of those species here this year (pintail are present in the thousands here earlier in the winter season). I took my opportunity of walking the dike around the lake by taking many more photos of birds here today.

When I am conducting the full count, I don’t really have time to spend taking too many photos, so I will meter my good photos from today out over the next several posts! Here is a quite obviously staged photo of me “on station” this morning.

Once help arrived, it took another 45 minutes for them to take the tire to a nearby village while I waited and did a little more photography of a small flock of the near-endemic Ashy-crowned Sparrow Lark. The intensity of the sunlight here even at a fairly early hour of the morning (8AM) makes it very challenging to get truly good photos of these birds. I may leave a little bit earlier tomorrow to try to counter this and give me a little more chance at the “money” sun-angle the early morning provides.

Ah, dinner time – until tomorrow.