28 Jan 2014

28 Jan 14 - The Day Of The Jackal

After yesterday's Big Foot day around Bharatpur I had a leisurely second & final morning. An all too brief visit to this excellent area, but the time for the flight home was getting all too close. This time I opted for the rickshaw approach for the morning as I needed to be back for an afternoon taxi to Delhi. This wasn't purely a lazy approach (although it partially was), but it was designed to get me to maximise the time in the main wetland area as well as hopefully to see some more Owls. The rickshaw drivers have a good idea of some of the stakeouts for the local Owls & Nightjars. In 91, I remember seeing 2 or 3 Nightjars roosting in trees along the main track, but this year there were none staked out. However, there were staked out Owls so some more chance to indulge in Owl photos.
Indian Scops Owl: The pair near the small temple
Dusky Horned Owl: This species is slightly bigger than Rock Eagle Owl. It is something I was hoping to see again & Bharatpur remains the only site where I've seen it
Dusky Horned Owl: The nest isn't close, but that's probably a good thing given the large numbers of Indian photographers who seemed to be milling around Bharatpur with big camera lenses, but little apparent knowledge of the birds they were photographing
There were a number of other species seen today, that had been missed on the Big Foot day as well as many species that were seen again.
White Pelican
Grey Heron
Night Heron: Enjoying a sleep
Black Bittern: Skulking in the water's edge vegetation alongside the track
Painted Stork
Black-necked Stork
Oriental White Ibis: With a Spoonbill for company
Spoonbill: The immatures have black wing tips
Lesser Whistling-duck
Shoveler
Ferruginous Duck: The male has a pale yellow eye & bluer bill, compared to the dark eye & darker bill of the female
Marsh Harrier: Female
Bronze-winged Jacana: Unfortunately, the only one I saw on the trip & it wasn't close
Ring-necked Parakeet
Rufous-tailed Flycatcher
Bluethroat: Female
Bluethroat: Female
Monitor Lizard
Fish: This was about 18 inches long
As hinted at in the blog title, some photos of the Bharatput Jackals.
Jackal: 4 Jackals were chasing each other around so I'm assuming it was a territorial dispute
Jackal