Tirumala after ages

Finally after multiple procrastination and delays, we made a trip to tirumala last week. I was curious and looking forward to this trip for couple of reasons. It's my trip after a 15 year period! It's my first trip after I started birding and it's happening around GBBC time, so I was hoping to catch up with some birding as well.

After doing the traditional darshan and rituals I managed to squeeze in some time to do little briding and some insect clicks

We saw a huge banyan tree where the kids were happy to play.
A bee and some wasps too turned up.

Post returning to Tirupati, I managed to volunteer to take a group of children at Regional Science Centre for a nature walk.  We spotted some orioles, ashy drongos and went around the centre. As they saw the best things were saved for the end.

At the end of the walk, we saw a group of Red Silk Cotton tree flowering in full. What a show it's for us. One by one as if someone called them by name, birds started turning up. Purple sunbirds were all over the places, Pale-billed and interestingly Thick-billed flower peckers turned up. Ashy drongos, Jerdons' Leaf bird couples. So what do you do when such opportunity turns up, we made most of it like this:

What was supposed to be a 2-3 hour thing ended up as an almost full day activity. We had a snack and sat below the tree to spot birds. While my son goes around checking all the science fun things around the center, I ended up checking the insects around.

Here are some pictures of the critters we found

A very pretty heavy-bodied jumper - jumping spider

A lynx spider

We also saw a carpenter bee lying on the ground. We picked it using the Silk cotton flowers and left it safely only to see later that the red weaver ants carrying it away !

Here are the kids and adults looking up the silk cotton tree show

We also saw Wild Almond Tree . It has lovely seed pods.

The highlight of the day for me was this stick insect  Indian Grass Mantis
We were fooled by it's appearance thinking it's a stick insect. Returning to Bangalore, iNaturalist helped us id it correctly and it also prompted me to create the missing wikipedia page for the species. It's scientific name Schizocephala translates to "split head" depicting it's head. Those lovely eyes and head makes a pretty insect.

The Regional Science Centre in Tirupati is a wonderful place for kids and adults to spend time. It's thoughtfully setup. Younger kids will love the dinosaur exhibits with sounds besides some experiments, middle school or high school kids will enjoy the exhibits for sure.

I will strongly recommend it to anyone visiting Tirupati, Its worth spending half-a-day here. The small Planetarium is nice and the entrance fee is very less. Besides, the beautiful campus set at foothills of Tirumala hills, barely 500 mts from Alipiri, attracts lot of birds, insects. The staff too are enthusiastic  that they keep organising activities and had an active club of children and adults. Overall it's a must visit place in Tirupati. 

Wetland Survey Weekend

A super packed weekend with two days of lot of walking, birding, travelling! As a part of the Bangalore Lake/ Bird survey 2020, I had an opportunity to volunteer the weekend of 25/26th January for a survey.

On 25th, a group of 4 women with wonderful wit and energy joined me as we went around and did the census at Gunjur, Gunjur Palya, Mullur and Halanayakanhalli lakes. Most of them despite of being new birders showed tremendous enthusiasm in identifying the birds. Though most lakes we visited didn't had much water and heavily encroached, we went around walking a lot seeing the birds around. As usual, I didn't click many pictures. The highlight was the booted eagle chased by the Ashywoodswallows and the plovers at the Halanyakanahalli.

Despite of the little water present,a lake-bed-turned-cricket-pitch next to it,  halanayakanahalli lake had a good shore that was hosting some stints and plovers! We had tough time identifying them. Gunjur lake had little or no water, but hosted a sandpiper and the green bee-waters were present at all lakes. The lunch at Rasaganga opposite new Wipro office was good and leisurely. Appreciate the women who left their family (including kids) behind and spent a day counting birds walking in hot sun for long distances.

My initial concerns of managing their safety was put to rest as we had good time, some laughs, puns (beeater) and had a nice company! It's a good day of birding.

On 26th, I had another team as we head to Hosur road. Kailash was kind enough to drive us around. We started with the farthest and the largest lake, Muthanallur. As soon as we reached the lake, a peregine falcon flew past our car. It's an omen of a good day perhaps! I mis-identified a grey-bellied cuckoo but we were treated to a spectacle of watching 6-8 Golden orioles going around catching caterpillars and beating them on the bark and slurping them.Never seen so man orioles in one spot! A group of 6 red munias and watching red munia collect nesting material was also memorable. We had a decent outing at the lake with 70 + species. Rajesh, Rashmi who joined us were enthusiastic.

We went to Boomasandra lake next. Though it's polluted and encroached, we walked further in the east to discover some really old fig trees and lianas that reminded me of western ghats or the lianas of IISc. It's luckily in tact and I hope it can b converted into a reserve forest kind!

The Chikka Nagasandra lake had good potential, but dried up totally. There was a forest fire(shepherds) fulled by dray bamboo and industrial waste. We were shocked to see clutter of peacock feathers. Probably someone hunted and ate them! We complained this to BBMP Wildlife wing. Hope it leads to more patrolling.

We wrapped the day at what turned out to be a beautiful lake called Huskur Lake. It's setup at a fantastic location, right next to the railway track. We were thrilled to see a group of 70 Northern shovelers go in circles and land in the lake. We spotted the Greater spotted and Indian spotted eagles flying high. We also spotted the Little ringed plovers on the lake bed.

The lake had good shore lines, cultivation on the bed and beyond, islands, huge trees on the banks, thus supporting a diversity of birds. Except for a sore sight of borewell being dug at one end, we were happy to discover this lake as a part of the census.

Bird race 2020

The Bangalore bird race 2020 arrived and as usual, I contacted Ratnesh of aarohi and we formed 4 teams and all set for the race. For those who are not aware, it's an opportunity to see as many birds as we can from 6 am to 6 pm around Bangalore and meet in the evening and check each others findings. We registered as green team like we did from past 4 years. This meant we need to use public transport for commuting.

We chose IISc as our birding place, thanks to my friend Shuba bhat who is an excellent birder who lives in IISc. Like last year, this year too she helped us in getting permission to bird inside the campus. We all met at Shivajinagar bus stand, took a bus to IISc, where we met few other team members. At around 7:00, we started birding. My friend subbu joined us despite of recovering from sickness and helped us with the walk.

The first bird besides crow was a surprising Indian Paradise Flycatcher. It evaded few of us, but most of us saw it and kids who saw it for the first time were super thrilled. We saw barbets, parakeets and black kites. We had a quick breakfast and headed to the swimming pool and past the wild path to the lake where Shubha met us briefly and gave us some goodies. Unliek last year she couldn't join us as she has some other work. The lake was hotspot as we saw the verditer flycathers and tickell's blue flycatchers besides a grey wagtail and white-breasted kingfisher. We sat at rock listening to birds, watched them have bath at bird bath.

We saw booted eagle from close and discussed about brid behavior including sunbird and woodpeckers feeding behavior. We spotted some chestnut-tailed starlings and both variety of mynas and could see the differences between the two. A brown shrike briefly turned up and disappeared along with some yellow-billed babblers. We munched further on more snacks as well as the karachi biscuits.

Moving on, we saw few Coppersmith barbets nesting. We also spotted Ashy drongo. By then it's well past 10:30 and birding activity dwindled. We walked back to the canteen and have a good lunch. Near the canteen we spotted the big wasp nest too. Those who can't eat food , "sold" food to others in the team to ensure no wastage happened and we walked to Sankey tank.

I chose Sankey tank as it's close-by and on internet it shows open from 6 am to 6 pm. However reality turned out that it opens at 4:00 PM. We had 2 hours to wait and we birded from outside and went to other gate to find same answer and despite of our requests for brid survey, we were not let in. While walking on the tank, we noticed the creeper fig Ficus pumila which stuck to the walk so strongly. Few of us discussed characteristics to identify a fig. We also saw this colorful flowers, which google helped to identify as Paper mulberry

Seems like it has male and female plants. So not sure if this gets pollinated or not. It's a bright and colorful fruit.

We decided to move to Hebbal lake and try our luck. Turns out, we walked a km to the bus stop and caught a bus to Hebbal lake. We were surprised to know that the lake is open through the day (unlike Sankey). We realized how these days all lakes were fenced, had security and had restricted entrance making life difficult for birders who want to survey them at mid-day.

At Hebbal lake, we spotted some egrets and not many bird actively feeding. There are few on the far island which are difficult for children to spot with binoculars. However we saw some grey hornbills flying past on the other bank that brought some solace.

We headed back and it's surprising to see young children still having energy despite of walking 12-14 kilometres. The day ended with talk by Dr.Subrahmanya.S on his re-survey of Salim ali Mysore state survey. We had a good dinner and headed back home.