The day we spot the Jacobin's cuckoo

Trip #2

On Saturday night, we are better prepared for the camping trip: we have a stove and fuel for it. Hot parathas and tea even in heavy rains bolsters spirits.  The kids' tent is snug and comfortable. The adults' tent is another story: water leakage through the open window makes it yet another wet and uncomfortable night. Maybe we ought to be throwing the tarp on top of the tent instead of keeping it under the tent. The peacocks and the brainfever bird scream all night long. What's up with these crazy birds? 

Sunday morning dawns with a brilliant orange sun peeking through thin purple clouds. I am moved to perform Surya Namaskar for the first time in decades. We each set off in different directions for walks. 

We spotted a Jacobin's cuckoo. It's easy to spot because of the bright white bands on its wings in flight. 

                                                                

We also spotted Malkohas: 

<-- This is Sirkeer Malkoha. A very very shy bird.

 

This is the green billed Malkoha  

 

(from https://anotherglobaleater.wordpress.com/tag/green-billed-malkoha/)                                      

Did you know that Malkohas are also part of the cuckoo family? So, just in 2 days, we have seen:

- The regular koel cuckoo

- The Jacobin's cuckoo

- Brainfever bird

- The two Malkoha species

Perhaps it's because of the rainy weather (the Jacobin's cuckoo is supposed to be a harbinger of the monsoon)

The red wattled lapwings are back to their screechy "did he do it" calls... many juveniles, so I guess the adults get nervous. "Chillax lapwings, we aren't interested in killing you or your kids" is something I wish I could tell these birds. 

Other birds we keep seeing:
White browed bulbul                                                        Gold fronted leafbird

                        

Bonelli's eagle                                                                    Honey Buzzard 

                                                                                        

Raptors are notoriously difficult to distinguish. I am certainly useless at it. Ram, despite his vast experience in bird watching, also finds it challenging. In fact, there's a whole article on the difficulties faced by most people in distinguishing raptors. The first sentence of this article is "Diurnal raptors are notoriously difficult to identify in flight: raptors in India are even more so than in most other areas because of the greater number of species (68) and the lack of definitive information in bird field guides" (Clark and Schmitt, 1992 Journal of Bombay Natural History Society)

Peacock footprints in the farm

    

                                                 

 A nearby dam attracts egrets                                                                   

                                                

Durga and Ram saw nightjars  

It camouflages itself really well. And it comes out only at night and it's extremely shy. 

But sometimes one gets lucky and can spot one or two by the side of a grassy mud path during twilight or early night. Apparently there are many species of night jars (Skyes, Indian, grey, long tailed, great-eared, jungle etc)

No idea which one we spotted....probably the common Indian nightjar

Ani and RK play cricket and monkeys come to watch

                       

Durga loves climbing trees and watching the world go by

                        

Worm found... mistakenly first declared as caterpillar, then centipede and now we realize that it's a

  millepede! What's the difference, you ask? Check out the link! 

 Not just that... it has blue legs!

A quick search on Google Lens does not give me any results on millipedes with blue legs (although the results all agree on its millipede-ness.  Durga thinks we might be the discoverers of a new species (Millipedus prasadfamilitus)                             

Other creatures on the farm seen:

Hares and baby hares

Bees

Monitor lizard (possibly)?

Bonnet macaques

This was a lovely bee hive and the bees were so friendly. But sadly, someone came the next day and removed the hive. Glad I got a taste of the honey and a pic of the hive before it disappeared

All pictures from Wiki Commons, or taken by us, unless otherwise referenced

Starting an Alternate Life Style

 Trip #1: Wednesday: 2-3 June 2021

We decided last week that we would start an alternate lifestyle: we would come to the farm every Wednesday and Saturday, spending the night camping and returning to Bangalore the next day. We also thought we ought to start growing some trees and plants on our plot in the farm.

It was perhaps a real test of our resolution the the very first time we came to the farm after a long hiatus on a quest to begin this resolution that it should have been a rainy day. We had new untested tents, we had no camp stove, but we were adamant and we had the confidence that should things go really badly, we always had the car to take shelter in.

The recent rains had made surrounding fields of chrysanthemum and grape vines lush and verdant

Vines after harvest

           Mums before harvest!

The ponds from the quarries are full and the surface run off makes little muddy brooks.

 

So the first night of our lifestyle was a bit of a tester: it rained incessantly, there was thunder and lightning, the tents were smaller than expected, bugs got inside our pants and inside the tent, we were severely bitten by mosquitoes and Perry our dog could not figure out why we were making her sit inside a crowded tent when she really just wanted to be outside eating moths. But there were also many successes: the tents were put up while there was still light; we planted the sapling (guava? We still don’t know) that had been transported from Bangalore; we finished our packed dinner before the rains began and were ready for bed by 8pm, when it was pitch dark in the farm.

The kids learned to use the sleeping bags when it got cold; we learned the hard way that removing the roof off the tent wasn’t a good idea in the monsoon season and Ram and I realised that our particular tent did not appear to be water resistant. 

Quality of sleep was pretty awful- city dwellers do not realise how loud the night can be out in a farm, and these are strange noises to our city ears. We start at every sound, we imagine all sorts of wild life apparently on no other quest than to hunt for us mercilessly as we lie hapless in the dark protected only by a flimsy layer of nylon, every bird’s chirp is magnified, every rustle of the wind appears to be a gale, and we stay up in the tent eyes wide wondering how the others in the group are able to sleep.

Utterly drenched and cold, I waited for the first rays of light and then shot out of my miserable little wet hole, raced to the car and changed into dry clothes  It was bitterly cold, although it had stopped raining. I jumped around trying to get warmed up since all my clothes, wet or dry, were thin cotton better suited for hot and muggy Bangalore. The kids ran into the car and turned on the heater. I do not recall going to birdwatch this first day. We did however weed our plot and yanked out hundreds of Congress plants. Really experienced, for the first time in my life, the difference between tap root and fibrous rooted weeds…. Tap rooted plants are awfully difficult to uproot! 

Parthenium/ Congress plant. They are everywhere :(
These pics to the left and above from this source:
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/270271589_Effects_and_Management_ofParthenium_hysterophorus_A_Weed_of_Global_Significance/figures

By 7am, we were done weeding. We packed up our tents and headed back. 

Birds we saw included the usual ones:

Little bee eater

Indian Robin (which I ALWAYS confuse with the male bushchat)

Laterite quail

Kingfishers

Swallows

We heard the brain fever bird for the first time- incredibly loud, but also very very shy. Was hard to spot it.

And for the first time also, I saw the helicoptor bird (red winged lark)

Little bee eater... what a beautiful little eye band it has... like a little bandit!

    

These are pictures of the Indian robin from Wiki, Flickr and eBird

This is the pied bushchat                          

So similar, right? Who wouldn't get mixed up? I guess the beaks are different...

Here are the laterite quail, apparently a discovery made by Salim Ali and Hugh Whisler in the 1940s 

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                      Picture by AK Raju in https://jlrexplore.com/explore/on-assignment/the-discovery-of-an-unusual-quail

Brainfever bird or the Common Hawk-Cuckoo: 

   For all its screaming, an exceptionally shy bird

The helicoptor bird (red winged bushlark), so called because it flies up, hovers and then lands.

Successes of this trip:

A) Survived a rainy night out reasonably intact. Learned what to do to prevent rain from coming into the tents.

B) Transplanted a tree from our house in B’lore to the farm plot in Chikkaballapur

C) Weeded the plot and learned about tap and fibrous roots. Caught a glimpse of the very rich insect life that lives within the ground and come scurrying out when weeds are uprooted!

All pictures from Wiki Commons, unless otherwise referenced