12/28/2022 0 Comments Himalayan monal pheasant size![]() Pawan spots a large shape on a branch just over the path: a Brown Fish Owl. The sun is dropping low in the west and it pierces the forest canopy on the steep hillside. At Kameria, further up the Kosi River, we again walk down to the gravel riverbed but at the other end of the day, as the air cools. White-browed Wagtail is the world's largest wagtail and a common bird of Indian rivers (Rod Standing). This is a relaxed and rewarding way to watch birds and our heads are spinning as we get back to the car so many new species in just a couple of hours. The people are welcoming as we pass – they smile and wave – but are not particularly interested in us. The village is teeming with even more passerines: Bar-winged Flycatcher-shrike, Indian Robin, Brahminy Starling, Black-chinned Babbler and many others. We wander back to the road through some houses, the sun now hot on our shoulders and a faint smell of woodsmoke in our nostrils. Eventually, as it approaches, it realises that we are in its way and it flies round us to get to the next bit of river edge with a loud kleep kleep kleep. We watch it wading towards us thigh-deep in the icy water, probing among the stones for food with its ibis-like bill. Pawan eventually finds a single Ibisbill feeding by a channel out in the middle of the floodplain and it is every bit as wonderful as we were expecting. It’s a wonderful mix of the nearly familiar and downright exotic. An iridescent blue Indian Peafowl perches in the branches of a distant tree. Several Great Stone-curlews, River Lapwings, many White-browed Wagtails, Rosy and Paddyfield Pipits, a Booted Warbler in some low bushes and a Variable Wheatear. Out in the open on the gravel riverbed, between the gurgling channels, are more new birds. My eyesight has declined in recent years and I now find it hard to connect with small birds in trees and bushes, but Mahesh is patient and with his help I get good views. As we walk beside the river, our guide Mahesh points out a Grey-headed Canary-flycatcher, a Tickell's Blue Flycatcher, Yellow-bellied and White-browed Fantails and a flock of Scarlet Minivets. The colourful variety of Indian birds is dazzling. The charismatic Ibisbill was located along the Kosi River (Rod Standing). #HIMALAYAN MONAL PHEASANT SIZE DRIVER#Our driver Pawan drops us near the temple and, walking down to the riverbank, we quickly meet the standard pair of Himalayan river redstarts: Plumbeous Water Redstart – a plump lead-grey little bird – and White-capped Redstart, which is much bigger and gaudier. The river here also draws birders to see Ibisbill: a distinctive species which breeds by the rocky streams of the Himalayas, but fortunately winters lower down in this much more accessible location in the foothills. Standing isolated in the gravel floodplain of the Kosi River is the Girija Devi Temple, a magnet for pilgrims and tourists. Who knows when travel there will be possible again, but I hope that this account provides some armchair enjoyment and inspiration for birders in these uncertain times. My brother Dom and I were fortunate enough to have planned a trip to the northern Indian part of the range in February this year, just before the travel restrictions resulting from the coronavirus pandemic. In most countries the Himalayan foothills would be considered mountain ranges in their own right. The landscape here is on a different scale from anywhere else. Who does not have a special place in their imagination for the Himalayas, the greatest mountain range on earth? More than 2,000 km long, with most of the world's highest peaks, this remote, majestic region has fascinated travellers – and birders – for centuries. Thin sip sip calls announce the arrival of a flock of Altai Accentors as they land on bare ground nearby to forage for seeds, their grey-brown plumage blending perfectly with the earth.Ī spectacular male Himalayan Monal (Rod Standing). ![]() Looking up, we see a Bearded Vulture glide along the ridge far above, without a twitch of its immense wings. Further down the hillside the slope steepens and disappears, the valley floor invisible. ![]() Despite the sun, the late winter air is chilly and drifts of snow lie on the mountainside around us, dead vegetation poking through in places, dry and brown. We are up some 2,700 m, near Chopta, in the Himalayan foothills of Uttarakhand state in northern India. Surely, I think, this must be the most beautiful bird I have ever seen … After a minute, the Himalayan Monal decides we pose no threat after all and starts pecking in the moss, the feathers of its back iridescent in the dappled sunlight. It lands on the mossy branch of a huge tree some 25 m away and warily examines us. A bird the size of a large pheasant explodes into the air just beneath the cliff edge and powers away over the void – a shimmering flash of blue wings, white rump and fanned orange tail. ![]()
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