Documentation or data collection?

The view that greets me along my morning commute…

This morning I had the good fortune of relocating the previously mentioned Greylag Goose in the midst of 147 Bar-headed Geese (my highest count of Bar-headed’s yet). Relton unfortunately was unable to make it out to accompany me on the survey (and hence I didn’t get a chance to bird the nearby grasslands for previously mentioned specialties…). So he missed out on seeing this regional rarity. I texted him when I relocated it and he communicated how important it would be to get good record shots of the bird so it would be accepted by India’s scientific bird community. Well luckily for me, the geese all decided to land on the north side of the sanctuary in view of the observation tower. Normally they overfly me at this location and land among the heron/stork rookery which is at the limit of what I can identify through my scope. So I had more opportunities to get some photographs than the usual 10 second fly over that the geese had given me on my two prior chances of documenting the bird with a photo. I tried using the digital zoom on the Sony Cyber-shot (19x) but after reviewing those photos the results were quite poor. I also tried using the Nikon Coolpix point and shoot camera that Devadass has that I intentionally have been bringing along just for situations like this. This is where digiscoping has a definite advantage over the more limited optical zoom cameras like the cyber-shot. Using my scope, the point and shoot camera was able to derive a much higher quality image of the distant flock. This is incredibly valuable for birders so they are able to document many species of birds adequately that would be impossible without enormous telephoto lens with an SLR camera. All this being said, the flock of geese began slowly swimming out and getting closer to me so I decided to wait and get the best image possible since my first attempts were still rather abysmal. My patience was rewarded and the flock got maybe 25% closer and my best result is definitely identifiable to Greylag (although still not a photo that I’d normally be happy with!). But, this is a perfectly fine “record shot” which substantiates my single-observer report of this species here (normally not as highly credible as reports seen by multiple observers).

Meanwhile, the better percentage of my morning had elapsed while I waited for the geese to approach and I now didn’t have nearly enough time to thoroughly conduct the rest of my count… I made do and tried to cover as much as I could with the time I had. It also was much hotter at each stop than normal due to the sun being quite a bit higher in the sky; this had a negative effect on the amount of birds I saw too. I still ended the survey with 108 species, only slightly below my last 8 visit average of 110 species (my species total has increased as I’ve learned more of the local bird calls that I don’t necessarily see every time). The only other highlight for today was probably a flock of ~80 Black-tailed Godwits that circled the lake several times before heading north.

This morning I had stopped at a small pond on the way and had tried to get some photos of several species of birds that have been eluding me, namely Bay-backed Shrike and Hoopoe. I got an okay photo of a Bay-backed Shrike (left), poor photos of hoopoe (and white-breasted waterhen…finally!), and some nice bonus photos of some extremely cooperative Red-rumped Swallows that let me approach to within 20 feet (below)!

The attendant at the gas station that I’ve been regularly frequenting has begun to ask for a tip from me when he fills the tires of the moped with air. It’s not a big deal at all and I had offered it the first couple times that he filled them but he had emphatically refused saying that it was complementary. I’d even talked with the owner of the station and he had also told me that it is free. Yesterday the youth was quite belligerent with me about demanding a tip. Perhaps that sort of attitude is rewarded in India (I tend to think that it probably isn’t) but it definitely had the counterproductive result with me. I told him that if he wants a tip he shouldn’t ask for one and drove away. We’ll see if he understood what I meant next time…there’s 2 rupees riding on his attitude!

The relative nature of rarities…

Today I almost messed up. No, I didn’t almost fall in the lake again, or drive over more thorns, or…you get the point. I almost missed a pretty rare bird due to me lapsing into the familiar swing of the survey. I had reached the first transect point (a little late due to some gastro-intestinal issues that have arisen…) and I had sat down on the concrete wall by the tower to eat my breakfast of bread, butter, jam, and a banana that Carolyn had kindly packed for me (as she does everyday). I was feeling a little out of it to begin with, and then the local workers (I call them this despite me seeing them do much work ever…) approached me wanting to look through my scope (as usual). I obligingly lowered it for them and they chattered in Tamil about the birds (at least I think that’s what they were talking about…) while I sat there drinking water and waiting for them to move off so I could actually count the birds that were there. As I was sitting there, I heard the distinctive low-pitch, almost nasal honking of approaching Bar-headed Geese. I turned to count the flock and immediately noticed that it was the largest single flock of Bar-headeds that I had seen yet and I got out the new camera that Relton had loaned me (for the remainder of my stay!) to test out the 12x optical zoom and get some nice shots of the geese in flight. After I took a couple of shots the birds were getting too far away and I went back to counting them through my bincos. It was only at this point in time that I realized that there was a different species of goose in the flock! Now, I got excited because I knew that none of the other goose species that occur in India are supposed to be here besides Bar-headeds and I quickly brushed aside the local who was on my scope and got the scope on the bird just long enough to tell that it was a Greylag Goose (the most likely of the brown-backed geese to occur here as it makes it as far south as Mumbai regularly – about 700 miles to the northwest) before the flock disappeared behind the rookery and landed out of sight. At this point I thought I may have inadvertently captured the Greylag in my earlier photos of the whole flock, and I checked on the camera only to find the first shot too blurry and the second shot I wasn’t able to pick it out on the small screen. Upon returning to Pullambadi and uploading the photos onto my laptop I was able to see that I did actually catch the Greylag but the quality is quite low due to the distance and the amount of cropping I had to do… Here is the original photo of the flock and followed by the cropped version (fourth bird from the front, with darker brown back and wings…tough to tell, I know). I got to thinking about how I immediately got excited about the fact that the bird was unusual here despite the fact that I have seen hundreds if not thousands of this very same species in the UK just last March (I actually have two photos of one from London on my blog here - 1, 2). A recent blog post by a birding friend of mine back in Wisconsin talked about this issue and I think he’s right on the money. It’s the unfamiliarity of a species in that area or to a person that makes it all the more noteworthy. Whether it’s someone who visits a new continent and everything that is seen is literally new to them, or someone who birds an area frequently but has never seen a certain species there, that same feeling of excitement occurs during both situations. So yeah, that’s just some of my musings from here in Pullambadi this afternoon…

Other interesting birds seen today included a lonely looking male Tufted Duck (remarkably my first of the survey…thousands were here last January), 12 Black-tailed Godwits, 2 Yellow Bitterns in reedbeds on the outskirts of a nearby village, my first sighting of a Common Woodshrike this year, and a couple of different plumages of Yellow Wagtail (very sharp looking birds…the camera batteries died as I tried to photograph one that was close…I’ll keep trying). And here’s a nice shot of a male Pied Bushchat that wouldn’t have been possible without the help of the 12x optical zoom on Relton’s camera!