Verditer Flycatcher... one hell of a beauty...

Classified as a Sit-and-wait predator - the Verditer Flycatcher is a beautiful bird. Once again a fairly common bird at the foot hills of Himalays, and South India, where I came across this bird. The problem with catching this bird on camera is only one. It has a dark lores (the eye band) and the eye just does not stand out in the photographs making you to get mad, mad and mad... But then sometimes you do strike gold when the bird is in good sunlight and you do not have to photoshop it to show off your bird...

The range of this bird is huge... it covers almost the entire India baring some areas in central India and Western India, South China and all the way down to Indonesia. Though the BirdLife says that the exact number of the birds are not know and even in the area within the range the bird distribution is fragmented. If at all they say that the bird populations are stable.

Even in the places it regularly disappears - giving me a feeling that the bird movements even if not classified as migration is there - probably based on weather or food.

Verditer Flycatcher: the beauty !!

 Coming back to the bird - this is a Old World Flycatcher - but slightly off the normal habits of a flycatcher. It has a habit of catching its prey mostly at the top canopy often sitting on tall poles, high trees. Most of the other flycatchers I have come across are generally at the lower canopy of the forest with them often perching under cover and in bushes.

Another beauty that decided to pose...

Like most of the birds the males are more brighter and females slightly duller with only a faint black lores.

Whiskered Yuhina: The commonest of Yuhina

There are six Yuhinas in India. The Whiskered Yuhina is one of the most common ones and unfortunately the only one that I have ever sighted. This is a bird species of the white-eye family Zosteropidae. The range extends across Himalayn forests in Northern India to North Eastern states, Nepal, Bhutan, Bangladesh and down till Laos, Myanmar, Thailand and Vietnam. Its natural habitat is subtropical or tropical most forests.

Whiskered Yuhina - one of the rare moments it sat still enough for me to click a picture...

It is sometimes found in mixed hunting parties with other Yuhina and fulvetta species. It is - as said earlier the most common of the yuhinas in the Himalays. It is one of the birds hunted by livestock herders of Northeast India.

Only thing is that I will have to travel East to Sikkim and beyond perhaps to sight the rest of the Yuhinas...

Visit to MORNI / TIKKAR TAAL 22 Dec 14

Mondays trip to morni - Rima Dhillon, Self, Jasbir Randhawa,

7am to 5pm (phew... a marathon birding session)

Report by Mrs Rima Dhillon.

7 am on Monday saw us headed out to morni in cold and fog. However soon after we passed berwala the mist cleared away and we were greeted by troops of monkeys and watery sunshine-better than none at all.

Between three stops for tea and sandwiches, cookies and my ever popular mathis we were able to sight 63 species though we could only hear the Great barbet and the Grey francolin.

The shutterbugs got some great pictures including those of the Asian barred owlets which were sighted thrice at different locations. Himalayan bulbul, red-vented bulbuls and grey-breasted prinia (in non breeding plumage) were seen in abundance, the sky was quite bereft of any raptors-just a few griffons searching for thermals in the far distance.

This trip we decided to give a miss to the Badi Sher area and instead go all the way to Tikkar Taal. It was a good decision as we came upon a pair of Black storks in the lake. Braving the aggressive bull in the field near the lake we tried to get closer to the storks for better fotos but alas jasbir was quickly tagged by them and they took flight.

The return to Chandigarh was via a different route.Just before the fork that bifurcates towards Badisher, there is another road leading down to chandimandir- it is marked by a number of teastalls under a huge banyan tree. Earlier this road was not motorable but now it is properly metalled and much shorter. It is about 14 km to the kalka-zirakpur highway and comes out 200 yards ahead of the toll plaza-the only drawback as you end up paying at the toll plaza!!

We discovered that Haryana tourism has an eco tourism setup with huts etc for staying and nice lawns at Thapla just 5km from the highway.

It was a marathon day as we got home at 5pm but well worth it. (List of Birds is after the photographs)

Rufous Sibia

White Browed Fantail

Black-throated Accentor

Asian Barred Owlet

Common GreenShank

Black Strok

Grey-hooded Warbler

Long Tailed Minivet

Russet Sparrow

White-browed Wagtail

1. Blue whistling thrush
2. Hoopoe
3. Indian silverbill
4. Oriental white-eye
5.  Common sandpiper
6. Grey wagtail
7. White wagtail
8. Laughing dove
9. Rufous treepie
10.  Himalayan bulbul
11.  Redvented bulbul
12. Black drongo
13.  Ashy drongo
14.  Grey bushchat
15.  Jungler babbler
16. Black-chinned babbler
17. Indian roller
18. Black redstart
19. Brown rockchat
20.  Indian peafowl
21. Ashy prinia
22.  Grey-breasted prinia
23.  Himalayan griffon
24. Yellow-breasted greenfinch
25. Black-throated accentor
26. Siberian chiffchaff
27. Streaked laughingthrush
28.  Asian barred owlet
29. Large-billed crow
30. Common myna
31. Great cormorant
32. Common greenshank
33. White-browed wagtail
34. Greater coucal
35. Rose-ringed parakeet
36. Little grebe
37. Common pochard
38. White-breasted waterhen
39. Black stork
40. Little cormorant
41. Little egret
42. Blue rock pigeon
43. Lesser whitethroat
44. Humes leaf warbler
45. Long-tailed minivet
46. Grey-fronted pygmy woodpecker
47. Fulvous breasted woodpecker
48. Rock bunting
49. White-capped bunting
50. Bar-tailed treecreeper
51. Rusty-cheeked scimitar babbler
52. Crested bunting
53. Rufous sibia
54. White throated fantail
55. White-browed fantail
56. Pond heron
57. Rosy pipit
58. Verditer blue flycatcher
59. House sparrow
60. Russet sparrow
61. Grey-hooded warbler
62. Red wattled lapwing
63. Black bulbul
64. Great barbet (heard)
65. Grey francolin (heard)
66. Lark (unidentified)