September 20, 2014 -- Bird Excursion

India Sept. 20 - Bird Excursion

Saturday, we hired a car again and our favourite driver, Johnny – the bird guru.

Our plan was to drive the road we take to school every day – so that we could hopefully spot and stop to photograph all the birds we fly past every morning.    After that, our plan was to revisit Ropar, near the dam where we saw Painted Storks a few weeks ago.

Anyway, we did both these things, and saw many of the birds we wanted to capture, plus some unexpected bonus birds that we have never ever seen before.  Rob was very lucky with his camera, as these pesky birds seem to fly into a tree and then COMPLETELY disappear – even brightly colour parakeets can do this!  In many cases, Rob just had to point his camera at a tree and hope that there was a bird in the frame. 

So where we HAD seen Painted Storks, this time we saw Woolly-necked Storks.  Ha!  The fig trees all seemed to have ripe fruit which proved to be a big draw for the Grey Hornbills,  the Barbet and a huge flock of Yellow-Footed Green Pigeons.  Ha! Again.  We also saw the Hoopoe, two different Parakeets and two different Wagtails.

A description of us walking along in the heat, holding binos to our eyes, craning skyward to spot some bird is not going to hold your attention.  I will simply attach pictures, in maybe three separate emails, of the birds we spotted.