Avian Beauties

So many beautiful colours, so many beautiful sounds. Birds will never fail to amuse me. I was around 10 or 11 years old when I started noticing birds. It built up as an additional interest with my wildlife photography. Wildlife safari trips were once an year affair, but bird watching we could do anytime.

My aunt, who is an environment enthusiast herself, encouraged us to learn more about birds. She was and still is amazing at spotting and identifying different bird species. As I mentioned in my earlier blog, there is an abandoned patch of trees and shrubs right behind our compound wall, and the view from my room is right into the patch.

I started spending time looking outside the window, into the patch. There were SO MANY birds that I could spot. I realised that I just didn’t look outside much. One day me and my dad noticed that we had spotted around 20 species within only a few days. The Indian oriole, coppersmith barbet, jungle babblers, oriental magpie robins, white throated kingfishers, Indian pond heron, rosy starlings, red vented bulbuls, drongo, red whiskered bulbuls, and many more. The Indian Oriole was my first bird crush and made a huge impact on my interest. Fascinated by what we had seen just outside our window, me and my father started noticing different species during our wildlife trips as well. We found so many different species with so many variations. Leading to which we got our first ever Book of Indian birds by Salim Ali.

Red Vented Bulbuls

Drongo and a squirrel

Asian Koel (male)

Indian Oriole

It was so much more in detail and I could understand how different and beautiful Indian species of birds are. It is honestly a completely different world and slowly it grows on you. Different from the human world, different from the animal world as well. We slowly developed our birding photography skills as well. It was much harder to capture birds properly, as they move so fast. Big animals like tigers, deers, bears, etc wait and are slow in their motion, however birds can sometimes be so quick and so swift that there are high chances you don’t even get a chance to spot them, capturing it in the camera becomes a completely different challenge.

After a few years of continuously going for wildlife trips we started birding trips as well. My aunt gifted me the Birds of the Indian Subcontinent by Richard Grimmett (or just Grimmett) on my 14th birthday. The Grimmett is an enhanced version of the Book of Indian Birds. I started reading the book very often to learn about the different birds and to get to know where and when we are able to see the various birds. There are a few birding seasons as well in India. The best time is from October to March, where there are a lot of migratory birds traveling through the Indian subcontinent. The different colours, shapes and sizes of these avian beauties always fascinated me, which was the main reason I enjoyed spotting them.

Chestnut Shouldered Petronia

Oriental Turtle Dove

Greater Egret

White Throated Kingfisher

There are many different birding sanctuaries and one of the most heavenly is in Dandeli, Karnataka. The Old Magazine House in Dandeli is one of the most amazing places to spot different birds and enjoy a good holiday in absolute nature and silence. The Western Ghats region is actually very diverse as there are over 29 endemic bird species like the Nilgiri wood pigeon, Malabar Starling, White bellied blue flycatcher, etc. The North western region of India is known for the amazingly beautiful species of birds as well, and it is one of my top places to visit. However, due to climate change and exploitation of forests, the numbers of these unique and endemic birds are declining.

White Rumped Shama

Orange Headed Ground Thrush

Asian Paradise Flycatcher

Tickell's Blue Flycatcher

Birds are vital for the environment, and they are one of the creatures on this planet gifted with amazing colour vision and their navigating skills are legendary. Till date, me and my father have spotted over 260 different species and are still counting more and more. There are over 1300 bird species in India, and over 140 of them are endemic to India, so we’ve got a LOT more to learn and cover.

Van Gogh once said, “If you truly love nature, you will find beauty everywhere”. Well, I found it in birds pretty quickly. Did you?

Thank you,

Love,

Tanisha.