Wild About India personal birding and photograpy tour Feb 09

The tour was organised and led by my good friend Jo Thomas who runs Wild About India, a company specialising in tailormade tours to India (www.wildaboutindia.com). The group comprised, Jo, her 8 yr old twin daughters Emily and Becky, her parents, Sheila and Barry, fellow BFer Richard, some keen photographers, Gordon, Martin, Dave and Claire, another lady called Isobel, my friend Fran and of course myself. Joining us for the duration of the trip was Ranno, who owns Hotel Sunbird in Bharatpur.

Day 1 In Transit

We arrived into Delhi just before lunchtime on the 11th Feb after our direct Virgin atlantic flight from Heathrow. I won't go into too much detail but suffice to say I was shocked by the poor service on the flight and would certainly not reccommed Virgin for this route (we went with BA last time and that was much better).

We had hoped to reach Bharatpur by late afternoon but, due to terrible traffic in Delhi we did not arrive until around 7PM that evening after a nice meal and some time getting aquainted we headed to bed for an early start the next morning. I would say in hindsiht that it is definitely better to arrive into Delhi on an early morning flight and escape the city as soon as possible. On our last visit we got in at 0520 and that allowed us to reach Hotel Sunbird in time for lunch and so gave us the afternoon to explore Bharatpur. On this trip we had two full days at Bharatpur so the lack of birding on our first day was not really a problem in any case.

I didn't bother with a bird list for this first day, given we were in transit but we did see several common species such as bank and common mynahs, black kite, black drongo, white throated kingfisher etc.

Day 2 Bharatpur

Last time I visited the park in November 2007 it was a real disappointment as it was completely dry. This time I am delighted to report that it was almost back to its former glory of the mid 1990's (minus the vultures of course!).

There was plenty of water this time and plenty of birds to keep all the photographers interested. Rather than write an exhaustive list (I'll leave that to the end) I'll just show you some photos:

Dawn over Bharatpur

Collared scops owl

Brahminy Starling

Pond heron

Little cormorant

Five striped bush squirrel

Intermediate Egret

White Breasted Water Hen

Painted Stork

Nilgai

Juvenile Purple Heron

Indian Pond Heron

Little cormorant

Indian Jungle Crow

Indian Magpie Robin

Painted Stork

Black Crowned Night Heron

Painted Stork

Yellow-Crowned Woodpecker

Common Kingfisher

Green Heron

Sacred Ibis

Turtle sp.

Sacred Ibis

Near the central temple is a tower viewing platform, from there you can view a huge swathe of flooded grassland. In the distance we saw Sarus cranes. There are loads of ducks to be seen from this tower, including many eurasian teal, wigeon, cotton teal, coot, pintail, both bronze winged and pheasant tailed Jacana, purple gallinules, white breasted water hens, garganey, shoveler, red-crested pochard, bar-headed geese, the list goes on!

Lots of water in the park this year!

Jungle babbler

Common Mynah

Purple Gallinule

Bronze-Winged Jacana

Purple Heron