Sunday Morning Birding in Mumbai

Mumbai has a very active bird watching group. The Navi Mumbai Naturalists (Namunas), led by Julius Rego go to a new trail every Sunday. Saru and I join them as often as we can. I am not a morning person, but this is the one day of the week when I don't mind waking up early. It is great to be outdoors in time to see the sun rise. I love being outside with the cool breeze and the active birds. Here are some images from last month.

These were taken near the JNPT police station in Uran.

Long Tail Shrike - Nicknamed as Gandhari because of the black patch near it's eyes. This is a common bird we see all the time, and I have been wanting to photograph it. Few weeks back, I saw a very beautiful, fat and plump Shrike in the bushes close to us, but my fat and plump husband didn't have the camera ready. I shot this at Uran just after it finished bathing. Some birds take a bath by rolling on early morning dew on leaves. It is fun to watch them.


Common Stonechat (Female)
I was trying to shoot a Hoopoe and this bird came and sat on a branch next to me and posed without any inhibitions. I got some lovely closeups. It is such a cute bird with beautiful eyes.



The pond there was full of ducks....mostly Northern Shovelers (Males are beautiful with a dark green head and white breast, females are brown and nondescript). There were also a few garganeys and spot-billed ducks.



Waders in the sky
There were a lot of waders in the grasslands. Once in a while, they would all collectively take off and form patterns in the sky. It is a defense mechanism to ward away predators.



These were taken at the mangroves in front of our building.

Shikra
These days, we can hear birds chirping all the way in our bedroom, so we went to the mangroves in front of our building to see what the hoopla was all about. We saw hundreds of pied starlings,but they were too far to photograph. On the way back, we saw this Shikra sitting on a tree branch. I took some record shots and slowly inched towards it from its back and was able to get closeup shots.





Flock of Great Egrets
One day we noticed a few painted storks in the mangroves, so went to look at them. They flew away, but the pond had hundreds of egrets. These are so common that you ignore them, but Saru took this postcard shot with their reflections .



Little Brown Dove / Laughing Dove
It was time to go to work and we were hurrying back home when I spotted this Spotted Dove. I took a very quick shot while Saru dragged me home not realizing that this would be the best picture of the day.