Clue number one was when she knocked on my door
Clue number two was the look that she wore
n’ that’s when i knew, it was a pretty good sign
That something was wrong up on cloud number nine…
–Finally found the One whom I was looking for so long. One of the best days of my life 
One thing really interesting that I have started to do off late is go Birding. Thanks to BNHS, I have got hooked to it. Few of my friends still ridicule me saying wot the hell is wrong with you, who the hell goes to birdwatching all the way out of town just to see a bunch of chicks! But, all I can do is turn a deaf ear to it. Birding is so cool, I still wonder why was I not so aware of this all these years. Never mind, better late than never!
I had been to a couple of BNHS outings, one to Navha Sheva and the other to Shewri and they were fun. So, I became a member of BNHS and this was my first weekend outing, something that I would cherish for a long time.
The Bhigwan camp was from 26th to 28th of Dec’08. Its a small town approx. 110 kms on the Pune – Solapur road (NH-9) and is surrounded by the backwaters of the mighty Ujjani Dam on the river Bhima. It is a proposed sanctuary for migratory birds, an area of about 18000 hectares. The backwater area is spread across and around the town of Bhigwan. I bet it is probably the best spot in South Central India to see ducks and other birds in enormous numbers.
We left Bombay early Friday morning from Dadar in a BNHS 25 seater mini-bus. We stopped for breakfast in Panel and then stopped again for Lunch little ahead of Pune. I was not at all amazed to know that people who had finished Lunch already started birdwatching in the nearby area. At first we saw a Male Purple Sunbird, then a female one joined in. After a while we saw 2 pairs. They are so restless, keep jumping around from one branch to another. The moment we saw birds, everyone came back with their binoculars and SLRs and started clicking. People on the road were wondering what are these guys upto!
Later, we moved on and stopped near a wet land for a couple of hours for birding. Here, we saw the following birds:
Western Yellow Wagtail
Grey Wagtail
White Wagtail
White-browed Wagtail
Citrine Wagtail
Large Grey Babbler
Booted Warbler
Purple Sunbird
Indian Baya Weaver
Black Drongo
Cattle Egret
Grey Heron
Painted Stork
Glossy Ibis
Ruddy Shellduck
Common Teal
Northern Pintail
Brahminy kite
Common Greenshank
Indian Roller
White-Throated Kingfisher
Little green bee-eater
Our count was nearly 35 odd when we discussed the birds that we saw in the bus on our way to Mayureshwar sanctuary. We reached there just before sunset. It was so nice to see a large group of Chinkaras roaming around freely in the sanctuary. A couple of them stopped by to pose in front of our cameras Thanks to Sandy, she spotted a couple of Bonelli’s Eagles resting on a tree right in the horizon. Sunset was absolutely amazing. Its really surprising that when I am in Bombay, I am so lost in the rat race that I have never noticed sun-rise and sun-sets. They had booked hotels in Baramati which is around 22 km from Bhigwan. Later we headed towards our hotel, freshened up, had a delicious dinner and called it a day as we had to assemble at 6:30am next morning for a round of bird watching at the backwaters of the Dam.
Baramati is a wonderful city with loadsa sugarcane, grapes farms. We saw sugar fields everywhere infact they chai-wallas used to add a generous amount of sugar to our early morning cuppa coffee making it very sweet. The best part of Baramati was food. I had the most amazing breakfast everyday. Used to hog on food. I had the most amazing, the most delicious missal pav along with hot vada pav with green chillies. After mouthwatering breakfast we headed for birding. Throughout the day, we went to 4 different spots and saw the following birds:
Little Grebe
Indian Cormorant
Little Cormorant
Little , Intermediate and Great Egret
Purple Heron
Indian Pond Heron
Black crowned night heron
Asian Openbill Stork
Wooly necked Stork <–These were majestic. I just loved them.
Painted Stork
Black headed Ibis
Greater Flamingo
Ruddy Shellduck
Garganey
Gadwall
Eurasian Wigeon
Northern Shoveler
Indian Spot-Billed Duck
Cotton Teal
Black-Winged Kite
Black Kite
Shikra
Osprey <– Absolute delight to see them in flight.
Western Marsh Harrier <– Still my favorite bird of prey.
Common Kestrel
Purple Swamphen
Eurasian Coot
Pheasant tailed Jacana
Small Pratincole
Red and Yellow wattled Lapwing
Less sand plover
Wood Sandpiper
Green Sandpiper
Little Stint
River Tern
Whiskered Tern
Eurasian Collared Dove
Laughing Dove
Rose Ringed Parakeet
Asian Koel
Greater Coucal
Pied Kingfisher
Common Kingfisher
Barn Swallow
Wire tailed Swallow
Red Vented Bulbul
Red Wishkered Bulbul
Common Iora
Indian Black Robin
and many more.
As the sun set in, we began to move towards our hotel, freshened up and again met in a conference room to discuss the birds that we had seen. Nikhil Bhopale our group leader from BNHS patiently answered all our birding queries and gave us some useful tips on identifying the birds correctly. Later, we called it a day as we have to get up early again and go birding!
The last day was very eventful, we packed our bags and headed towards a place called Kumbhar gaon for more birding and then headed back towards Bombay in the noon after more delicious food of Maharastrain cuisine.
There were a bunch of naughty little kids with us in the bus and I really had a gr8 time with them during the otherwise boring 6 hours journey between Baramati and Bombay. I will remember this trip for a very long time. And before I go birding seriously, I desperately need to buy a very high end DSLR camera. I have short listed Nikon D 80 to start with. Have started saving for it and would probably buy it in another 3 months or so. I have uploaded the pics to my flickr album. Again, the pics don’t do justice to the amount of fun that we had coz I used the 5MP point and shoot camera.
Its that time of the year again, to look back at the highs and lows of the year gone by and start the new year with a clean slate. Coming back to my last year’s resolution I was able to fulfill a lot from my wish list. Few of the highlights of 2008 are:
Uber cool list compiled by Zishaan
I personally think that there are 14 million reasons to be in Bombay and over a million things to do here.
I love birds and am an avid birdwatcher (no pun intended )
I wanted to go for one of the birdwatching outings organized by Bombay Natural History Society (BNHS) for a while now. However, I was either traveling or too busy with some thing that had stopped me for going for one and the same reason applies for not updating my blog for more than a month. So, this time I had made up my mind that come Sunday morning and I’ll make up for the outing no matter what. I hopped on to the BNHS mini bus from Vashi and in an hours time made it to Nhava Sheva. One of the busiest ports in India. We stopped on the way at many places where we could see birds. Initially we saw a flock of ducks, waders, lesser and great egrets and pond herons resting in the small pond. As we moved on we saw a couple of white throated kingfishers and hundreds upon hundreds swallows resting on electric wires. The sight was really good. We went back to the bus and moved to the next spot, we saw more of waders, sandpipers, common redshanks. The sight of a bunch of munias fluttering around us made my day.
I had gone first time with BHNS for birdwatching and had a good company of avid birdwatchers. They were carrying the field book of birds and listing down all the birds seen in their diary. Our group leader Nikhil Bhopale had a very very sharp eye. He could spot birds with his naked eye and correctly identify it and at times its gender too. I was totally awestruck. No wonder Nikhil is a two time winner of HSBC bird race. There were people carrying their SLRs with tripod stands and very high end lenses to capture the sightings of birds. Birdwatching requires a lot of patience. A couple of times I was wondering is this for me ? But when I saw the flamingos in flight, I all my restlessness had paid for. I have a 5 MP point n shoot digicam. So, the pics taken by it don’t do justice at all to the real life experience that I had.
It was around 8:30 am and our bus halted at the corner of a road. We all got down and our group leader guided us to deep inside a small alley as it would be impossible for the bus to take us there coz of bad roads.. After walking for almost 500 meters we witnessed the most amazing sight. Here, we saw painted storks, grey and pond herons, spoonbills, sandpipers, gulls, intermediate and large egrets and of course flamingos. There were exactly 10 of them. They were far and thankfully we all had a good pair of binoculars to see them, a must for all birdwatchers. There were many small birds around in small groups. Even saw a couple of spoonbills in flight. They looked so beautiful. At our next stop we saw a lot waders, sandpipers, redshanks and also few coots, drongo, large cormorant, bee eaters, larks, munia, red avadavat and a bunch of purple moorhen. They were really good. When a marsh harrier came by, all the small birds started moving around. The marsh harrier has an amazing wingspan. We even spotted a falcon sitting very high on an electric pole. By around 1pm we made our way back to Bombay and a brahminy kite bid farewell to us. I am looking forward for more such outings. It was a gr8 learning experience and one thing I need to work on is my patience and of course buy a high end SLR with good lens. I have uploaded the pics on my flickr album. Again, coz of my stupid digicam, the pics don’t do justice to the fun we had while birdwatching.
Got this in a mail forward…
Investment Ideas!
If you purchased $1,000 of Delta Airlines stock 1 year ago, you would have $49 today.
If you purchased $1,000 of AIG stock 1 year ago, you would have $33 today.
If you purchased $1,000 of Lehman Brothers stock 1 year ago, you would have $0.0 today.
But, if you purchased $1,000 worth of beer 1 year ago, drank all the beer, returned the aluminum cans for a recycling refund, you would have $214.
Every once in a while an album comes that I listen to all the time, be it day or night repeating the songs again and again in my playlist. Death Magnetic from Metallica is one of them. I am a big fan of Metallica and have been following it since a long time now. It was released on 10th of last month and since then I have been listening to it everyday and even getting my friends hooked up to it. Its their first album with the new bassist Robert Trujillo and it seems he has done a gr8 job. I was kinda disappointed with their earlier album St. Anger but this one just ROCKS. All Nightmare Long, Cyanide, The Unforgiven III, The Day That Never Comes, The End of the Line are master pieces. I like the start of All NightMare Long, its just awesome. I wanted to buy the new iPod Nano (4th Gen) since it was released and this album made me even more desperate to get one so, finally a couple of days back I bought a new iPod Nano 16 gigs and a pair of in-ear earphones for the extra effect, more on this later.
I even bought a Death Magnetic Poster from pringoo.com. Its too good, but coz of some unsaid reasons I can’t put it in my room 
Have to be satisfied with a wallpaper on my desktop. To headbang while watching Metallica Live in Concert after this album has instantly topped my wishlist.
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