Almost a year ago (see Nandi Hills, April 2008) I was fortunate enough to go up to the Nandi Hills, about an hour’s drive north of Bangalore (or Bangaluru, as it’s more properly known now) with ex-pat Brit Mike Prince (he of Bubo listing).

We saw what at the time seemed to me to be a continual trickle of interesting birds, including several regional endemics and/or birds I’d either never seen or only seen once or twice before like Grey Junglefowl Gallus sonneratii, White-cheeked Barbet Megalaima viridis, Yellow-throated Bulbul Pycnonotus xantholaemus, Indian Scimitar-babbler Pomatorhinus horsfieldii, Puff-throated Babbler Pellorneum ruficeps, Tawny-bellied Babbler Dumetia hyperythra, and Tickell’s Blue Flycatcher Cyornis tickelliae. Mike, though, as I noted at the time, was a little disappointed: virtually all of the winterers and migrants had moved through, and what we were seeing were the expected resident birds that he (obviously enough) saw on every visit.

Would making a return visit at the beginning of April rather than at the end of the month make a difference?

That was the important question (and when I say important it hardly ranks with “Will this weeks G20 meeting pull the world out of recession” or “Will I still have a job next month?” [can anyone out there offer a job to a fairly likeable chap with twenty year's experience of going round the world and co-author of a pretty well-known blog, by the way, because things are getting TOUGH in the airline business?], but it seems important enough when you’re in a car heading to the Hills, Swaros at the ready, and just an hour’s sleep under your belt).

And, by all that matters to a birder, YES a few weeks really does make a difference, because - thanks in very large part to Mike’s keen eyesight and knowledge of bird calls - we saw an absolute deluge of exciting birds, including SIX (yes, six) lifers! You know, when I tell other birders that when I get to some of the destinations I visit with the airline I’m only there for a day, they often pull a face that I can only describe as a sort mock sympathy mixed with a large dose of ‘HA, tough nuts, buster’ as the pangs of jealousy they felt just moments before are replaced with the certain knowledge that - actually - I really don’t get to see that many birds after all…

Well, I’m sorry but a few hours in a good spot with a knowledgeable local can be absolutely unforgettable - especially when it includes a chance of seeing monumentally wonderful species like Pied Thrush Zoothera wardii, Indian Pitta Pitta brachyura, Indian Blue Robin Luscinia brunnea,, and Sulphur-bellied Phylloscopus griseolus, Large-billed P. magnirostris and Tickell’s Leaf Warblers P. affinis…

Okay, I ought to backtrack and slow down a little (and I ought to apologise too for the slightly belligerent tone of the of the last two paragraphs, but - and I guess many 10,000 Birds readers are going through the same thing at the moment - it’s quite a shock to the system when you realise that your bosses don’t actually value you even half as much as you thought they did. Am I right? Of course I am)….

Google Earth image of Nandi Hills: the access road winds up the left of the frame, the Yoga Nandishvara Temple is the isolated building above the water-streaked cliffs of ‘Tipu’s Drop’ centre right, and the dark green areas are the patches of shola forest and gardens where the best birding is had.

An outlying part of the Western Ghats, the main destination at “Nandi” is the old and run-down hill fort built by the great Tipu Sultan, aka “The Tiger of Mysore” (a sheer 600 meter high cliff on the way up to the fort (centre right of the GE image) is still named Tipu’s Drop in recognition of the Sultan’s favourite method of disposing of his prisoners incidentally). On the top of the hill itself is a landscaped garden, a deep ‘tank’, and a small patch of shola forest (top right of the GE image) cut through with tracks and trails that thread between some huge native trees. The forest is home to the increasingly scarce - and very difficult to see - Nilgiri Wood-Pigeon Columba elphinstonii, and its bushes and shrubs are a magnet for wintering and migrant passerines. And overseas and ex-pat birders…

So, we’re in the car and heading to Nandi, some 65 Kms from Bangalore, and 1,478 meters above sea level. It’s 05:45 and Mike has picked me up from the hotel literally fifteen minutes after I got there after an all night-flight from the UK. I’m feeling a little dehydrated, bloated from the change in cabin pressure (and, to be honest, some pieces of French Toast soaked in Maple Syrup that I had unwisely decided I ought to scoff down just before we ‘disembarked the aircraft’ (as we pros like to say)), and I’m wondering whether it’s really sensible for a middle-aged man (even if he still thinks he’s a thirty-something rather than a forty-something) to be charging off for a hill climb on a hot day in April in southern India after no more than an hour’s sleep. It’s at this point that the question of “Will it make a difference being here in very early April rather than very late-April?” does in fact seem quite important (not as important as etc etc but important enough)…

Mike, who really is one of the very nicest people I know, is weighing up the possibilities and almost reluctantly dangling the birds he saw two weeks ago, and speculating that - yes, in his opinion - it should make a difference being here a few weeks earlier - though he can’t be certain and he doesn’t want to get my hopes up because like all genuinely decent birders he hopes he’ll deliver the birds but will take it personally to heart if he can’t (someone should turn this into a TV drama really…)

White-cheeked Barbet Megalaima viridis, a common southern Indian regional endemic

Singing Pale-billed Flowerpecker Dicaeum erythrorhnchos, a common resident in wooded areas in southern India

So, after an hour or so we get to the car-park by the Nandi Hill fort (after a few stops on the way up the hill which had yielded the nice views of the regionally endemic White-cheeked Barbet in the photo above, a couple of singing Pale-billed Flowerpeckers (perhaps the dullest of the world’s flowerpeckers, but I guess that’s easy to say if you’ve actually been lucky enough to see more than a couple of flowerpecker species) and a couple of turbo-charged Yellow-throated Bulbuls which I couldn’t have photographed if my life had depended on it), and there’s a Blyth’s Reed Warbler Acrocephalus dumetorum scouting out a flower-bed, a Greenish Warbler Phylloscopus trochiloides calling in some nearby trees, a Common Tailorbird Orthotomus sutorius singing from a low branch, and something just feels like today will be the day…

Blyth’s Reed Warbler Acrocephalus dumetorum: the upper photo shows what is pretty much a ‘classic’ individual, but some of the ‘Blyth’s’ in the region are notably longer-billed with very dark upper mandibles (as in the lower photo), and interestingly none of the ten or so we saw today gave the “checc” call so typical of the species. Is this just normal variation, or is there another explanation? There has - apparently - been little scientific study of acrocephalus in the sub-continent: leaving aside the problem of correctly identifying the recently re-discovered (and now increasingly claimed) Large-billed Reed Warbler A. orinus, could a cryptic acrocephalus species be wintering in southern India?

Greenish Warbler Phylloscopus trochiloides: a very common wintering species at Nandi.

Common Tailorbird Orthotomus sutorius: this small warbler is a resident breeder in tropical south Asia from Pakistan and India to south China and Indonesia.

In we marched through the entrance, senses on full alert, ready for anything - and almost the first bird I see, hopping around in the leaf litter in the shade of an avenue of trees, is - er, well, it has bright orange underparts, shining sapphire-blue upperparts, a gleaming white supercilium…and I can’t remember for the life of me what the darn thing is called, whether I’ve even see one before (it turned out I hadn’t), and I began an entire morning of poor calls and the sort of identification errors that means that I couldn’t place an Indian Blue Robin when it was hopping ten yards away, and went on to misidentify my life Large-billed Leaf Warbler (’Hey, Mike, that green-toned Blyth’s looked like it had a wingbar’) when it was just feet away (though I was being distracted by the rather gorgeous cyanotus Orange-headed Thrush Zoothera citrina in the photos below, so I have some sort of excuse - other than the obvious one of having no idea what a Large-billed Leaf Warbler looked like when I set out from the hotel two hours before of course…)

Orange-headed Thrush Zoothera citrina cyanotus: utterly beautiful, and slightly out of focus unfortunately…

It wasn’t, to be frank, the most auspicious of starts, but Mike either didn’t notice or was far too polite to comment. Did things get any better, or given the fact that I wasn’t going to get any LESS tired as the morning wore on did they get worse? Well, if you can just hold onto that thought for about another 24 hours I will tell you…right now, though, I need some sleep and this post is probably plenty long enough as it is…

Mike - and his UK-based colleague Andy Musgrove - runs BUBO Listing, a free website which allows the storage, viewing and comparison of birding lists. The site went public two years ago, initially concentrating on storing bird lists in the UK but is rapidly expanding internationally and now covers most of North America and many other parts of theworld.