Bird Checklist for Yamuna Biodiversity Park

The Birds Checklist for Yamuna Biodiversity Park!


Yamuna Biodiversity Park
Jharoda Majra (Near Village Jagatpur)
Wazirabad, Delhi
Tel: +91 11 2761 6569
Email: ybp@biodiversityparks.org

1.                               Alexandrine Parakeet

2.                               Ashy Prinia

3.                               Ashy Wood Swallow

4.                               Asian Koel

5.                               Asian paradise Flycatcher

6.                               Asian Pied Startling

7.                               Bank Myna

8.                               Bar-headed Geese

9.                               Barn Owl

10.                           Barn Swallow

11.                           Baya Weaver

12.                           Bay-backed Shrike

13.                           Black Bittern

14.                           Black Drongo

15.                           Black Ibis

16.                           Black Kite

17.                           Black Redstart

18.                           Black-breasted Weaver

19.                           Black-crowned Night Heron

20.                           Black-headed Gull

21.                           Black-headed Munia

22.                           Blackrumped Flameback Woodpecker

23.                           Black-shouldered Kite

24.                           Black-winged Stilt

25.                           Bluethroat

Fishing, birding, bathing and beering!

A trip to Marchula and Bhikyasen in the Corbett area.

We started from Noida at about 11.30 am, after several false starts. A critical component of the trip was going to be the incredible photography equipment that my friend KP from Bangalore had got along. Incredible by my standards, as the best I ever had was a Nikon digital camera that had 10X optical zoom.

He had a Canon D40 digital SLR with a plethora of lenses, including a 100-400 Canon, 70-300 Sigma, wide angle, 60 mm Canon besides several other lenses and accompaniments like filters, extenders and what not. The second most critical component of the trip was of course going to be the two fishing rods that he had also got along.

As we began to do the final loading of the bags in the car, which was a very complex task indeed, KP suddenly realized that he couldn’t find the battery of the camera. This was serious as not finding the battery, would render all the above mentioned equipment useless and our trip would be a disaster even before we set out. As for the camera’s battery, it was playing truant the second time. That very morning I had picked him up from another friend’s place, and there too at the time of leaving he had left the battery of the camera behind, and we had to turn the car back, search for it and bring it reluctantly along. The whole house including maids and helps went into a frenzy looking for the tiny grey black camera battery. After a few minutes the consensus was that it had got absent mindedly packed into one of the bags. We quickly got all the bags back into the house, and one by one started to unpack them. After ten minutes it was found inside a slot in the big camera suitcase. There was general joy and we got everything back into the car, and set out.

The journey was comfortable for a while, but then the roads began to crumble. The entire route had been a relatively smooth one until a few months back, but the recent rains had made large stretches of the road into stretches of potholes with occasional islands of intact road. Nevertheless, our spirits were high and we chugged along. There were frequent sightings of this bird and that, but we didn’t stop, our destination was many miles away and we didn’t want to do too much of night driving.

As we drove, KP mentioned that most of the towns that we passed looked like belched out industrial slag, and I agreed whole heartedly. We could see an inhuman desperation on the faces of the people who lined the roads as we passed through town after town. At places where it was particularly bad, we even imagined what it would be like to live there, and came to the conclusion that to be happy in life, each of us should spend 3 compulsory months running a hardware shop and living in such a town, so that we can better appreciate our so called terrible lives in Delhi and Bangalore respectively.

We stopped for a sad bit of lunch and a Thums Up bottle at a road side dhaba. Their toilet was well marked as ‘to let’. We ate very insipid yet chilly hot food, and then set off again.


Waiting for food at the lunch stop!


The toilet that was to let :)

Bad Birding Pictures, Good Birding Trip

I have a 6 mega pixel Nikon S4 digital camera, that is as good or as bad as most digital cameras, except for a decent 10X optical zoom, and a swivel screen.

That said, I can now be forgiven for the quite sad to very sad quality of pictures that I took of birds I saw during a recent birding trip to Pangot.

The Jungle Lore Birding Lodge in Pangot, is such a wonderful place to holiday in, and if you are a birder (or are trying to become a birder, like me), then it is heaven on earth.

It is about 15/20 kilometers from Nainital, ahead of Kilbury. The road leading to Pangot, from the point where it turns off from the main Haldwani Nainital road, itself is a high. A meandering badly maintained but safe road that sees not more than two vehicles an hour, it goes through beautiful forests and swerves along streams and then reaches the hamlet of Pangot.


Red Billed Blue Magpie



I’ve been to Pangot many times, and sadly each time there is a little bit more construction around the Jungle Lore Birding Lodge. I feel a little bit sadder, but it remains and will remain a fabulous getaway. Just a few cottages, very carefully placed on a hillside, with just the right balance of trees, shrubs, open space and natural beauty.

As it happened on almost every visit to Pangot, there was an expert birding guide in the lodge, and he was relatively free. As soon as he saw my binocs hanging from my neck, he asked me if I was a birder. I replied with a ‘uh uh… kind of…’ answer, and told him that I was a very keen learner.

Ganesh was from Nepal but shifted base to India about seven years back and has since been working with Mohit Agarwal, who runs the lodge and several other nature-laden properties across India.

I sat in the porch of the main wooden kitchen cum dining cum meeting cottage, and started to spot birds. Ganesh was busy for some time, so I walked a little downhill and sat on a quaint little bench amidst trees and shrubs and low bushes. As I looked around, I saw a beautiful green bird with orange around the edges of its wings (Orange Flanked Bush Robin). I got clicking, getting some awful pictures, what with auto focus, that usually focuses on the background, lighting problems that doesn’t let any photo be taken unless it is bright sunlight and the many other problems of trying to take a picture of a bird that keeps moving and flying off, with a regular digital camera.



Verditer Flycatcher



All of a sudden I saw several other varieties of birds, and my heart started to