Birding @ Akkikandi, Coorg

Location - Talakaveri reserve forest.
Team - Deepak, Niranjan and Sangeeta.
Date - May 7-9, 2007

Well it was not entirely a birding trip. We actually went there to attend the elephant census conducted by the forest department. Alas no elephants sighted but this never bothered us as the sheer beauty of the place took out breath away. We stayed in the Akkikandi anti poaching camp and participated in the census. Coming back to our feathered friends we did make a attempt to do some bird watching but were unable to spend much time as we had to concentrate on the census part.Early morning of day two we decided to do some birding and prepared ourselves to do the same. We walked along the road with hope of spotting some but the tree cover here is too thick and we could not sight any, we could hear many :). Later we decided to take the route into the forest instead of the road, for this we had to apply salt on our feet to keep the leeches at bay. They were omnipresent, you could just scoop out kilos of them from the ground if you wanted to. With salt workng it's magic we could concentrate on some bird watching. Again the tree cover proved too dense and we were able to hear the calls but could not trace the birds. The Malabar whistling thrush was on a song and kept on whistling. Then just by luck we saw some movement in a opening among the trees, we stood thee for quite some time to find out the bird. Behold a pair of Indian Treepie's flying around in the opening, what a sight!!!!! To add to the joy a Racket tailed Drongo comes flying in, it was a treat to watch these birds. We returned to the camp with just these sightings. On our way to the water hole to conduct census I got a chance to speak to the forest watcher, and asked him about the racket tailed Drongo(RTD). He told me how the bird got it's tail feather that way. Well the RTD is called Bhima Raja in Kannada for the fact that it chases away bigger birds, even some Birds of prey and it's an excellent mimic. The folklore goes this way, the RTD had complete tail feather similar to a treepie, and in it's quest to master all the animal's call it came to a water side. The final task was one that of mastering the Tiger roar. As it was practising this, termites began to eat away on the tail feather. The RTD saw this very late when only a small patch was left. It stopped mastering the call and flew away to save it's tail and hence the shape of the tail. May seem hard to believe but atleast we now we know where that tail came from ;-).

Some pics from the trip >>

The check list is as below.

1)Indian Treepie

2) Golden Oriole

3) Red Whiskered bulbul

4) Red vented bulbul

5) Parakeet

6) Racket Tailed Drongo

7) Spotted Dove

8) Common Myna

9) Pompadour Green pigeon

10) White cheeked barbet

Birds sighted on our way back @ Dubare....

11) Grey Hornbill

12) White breasted water hen.

13) White breasted kingfisher.

14) Pied Bushchat

15) White browed wagtail