Birding in Lalbagh

One fine morning during our trip to India in August, Ram, Durgoose and I went to Lalbagh Botanical Gardens in Bangalore.  Long ago, my cousins and I used to be taken to Lalbagh, but it's been decades since I've visited the place. It is just so huge that it's really difficult for anyone, let alone some cranky five year olds, to spend too much time there without getting utterly exhausted. Places in the US might be larger, but you can drive through such parks. In Lalbagh, you enter through one of four gates at the periphery of a 240-acre garden and then walk through its various sections.

As you enter through the gates, you will be greeted by some pretty spectacular gladioli and the sight of a lot of people walking through the gardens. Early in the morning, Lalbagh is free to walk through. After about 10:30am, when the flower show opens, is when the ticket stalls open.

One of the first marvels of Lalbagh is the Lalbagh hill, a 3000 million year old formation which is, if I recall the sign correctly, supposed to be some kind of pseudo-gneiss (whatever that is). On top of this small hill, Kempegowda, the founder of modern Bangalore, installed a post some time in the 1500's to mark one of the four corners of his new city. Bangalore has grown so much since then that the post is now in the middle of the city.

One of the first birds we encountered was the common myna. A member of the starling family, it is as common a sight in urban India as starlings are in the USA.

From the summit, on the opposite side from which you climb the hill, you can see a water body choking with water hydrangea. This is a perfect hiding place for birds like the purple moorhen. Nearby gulmohar trees and bamboos sway gently in the breeze.

Is there another tree as graceful as the gulmohar?

A family of parakeets madly cackle away. Can you tell where they are?










The lake at Lalbagh is where inexperienced birdwatchers like me feel like we have really hit pay dirt.  So many birds, each one more graceful than the next!

Here are cormorants (which, by the way, I could recognize because we had seen them all the way back in Galveston, TX!), pelicans, brahminy kites and painted storks!

Pelicans and cormorants fishing together

Cormorants sunbathing and swimming

Painted stork, cormorants and purple moorhen

Purple moorhen

Here are some pictures of the beautiful painted stork.  See that little dash of pink right by the tail? I think that's why it's called "painted".

Guess what this stork is doing by lifting its wing like that? It's blocking the sunlight and its reflection so that it can see its fish better!

Let me end this post by quickly summarizing the birds we saw that morning:

Common myna

Golden eagle

Purple moorhens

Jungle myna

Common crow

Jungle crow

Parakeets

Brahminy kite

Pelicans

Cormorants

Wild ducks

Painted storks

Owlets

Lalbagh is massive. We were only able to see a fraction of it. The terrains we covered (in about 2 hours) were:

Hills and rocks

Vegetation-covered ponds

Thickets

Big shady groves with large canopies

Lake and surrounding areas