10,000 Birds

March 2nd. Another overnight flight, and another dawn - this one in Chennai (or Madras as it was once called) on India’s south-west coast, the capital of Tamil Nadu, home to almost 8 million people, and the third Indian city I’ve visited this year already (the other two being Delhi and Mumbai). The two trips to Delhi and Mumbai were absolute crackers, but I have to admit I was really not looking forward to this trip very much. Much of the avifauna of the southern half of the Indian sub-continent (outside of the high endemism area of the Western Ghats anyway) is essentially fairly similar, and even though though some range-restricted birds are easier to find around Chennai than Mumbai my memories of the last time I came here are blighted by an overweight official with a “can’t quite be arsed to move” problem at the small but potentially interesting Guindy National Park (GNP) (and if you care to have a look at Sunbirds, Bulbuls, and Babblers you can see what I’m talking about). Would things be different this time around…?

With the flight landing very early on a Sunday morning, my choice of birding sites was - unfortunately - restricted to Guindy again. On the last visit I’d started the day on the coast and in the adjacent Theosophical Gardens, but the latter are closed on a Sunday and no birder in his right mind is going to tackle any popular public site at the weekend because (like in any large city anywhere) once the locals wake up and decide to head out for the day birding becomes a horrible experience and the laws of diminishing return start to kick in after about 10:00 am.

It was with a sense of trepidation, then, that after about two hours sleep I made my way via taxi to the gates of Guindy Children’s Park - an entrance which gets you into the Children’s Park, the Snake Park, and the National Park (if you’ve ever been to an urban National Park - and why should you have, there aren’t many of them - it’s an odd experience). I arrived at about 08:30 to be met by a member of the maintenance staff (who was brushing rubbish off the main path into a flower bed) who told me that a) the Park didn’t open until 09:30, and b) the Head Ranger wouldn’t be in until 10:00 as he “rested” on a Sunday…

Hmm. What to do? Okay, I’m going to be totally honest here and admit to doing something I have never done before and will never do again. I went in away. At least I went into the Children’s Park, with every intention of stopping, paying whatever it took, and making my explanations when I was challenged. I was still ready to stop, pay, explain etc when I walked the 400m or so to the iron gates separating the Children’s Park from the National Park and found them unlocked, unmanned, and apparently unwatched over. I was still ready to stop, pay, explain etc etc when after looking around for someone to ask permission to enter off I pushed on the gates and walked straight in. And seven hours later when I came back out - having seen absolutely no staff, no members of the public, no-one whatsoever - I walked back out again. I’ve no excuse, I shouldn’t have done it, and I won’t do it again - but I do have to ask why it was so easy for someone who evidently wasn’t a local birder to walk into a National Park without anyone stopping them? For the record when I went through the main exit, I went straight around to the Entrance again where I paid the required fee, and then went straight back to the exit and left again…

 

 

So what did I see while I wandered around? The list is at the bottom of the post, and to be honest it isn’t all that noteworthy. Guindy is a very arid patch of mainly thornbush and palms covering less than 3 sq.kms, and it may well be that many commoner winter visitors have already started to head north by the first week of March, perhaps I’m just making unfavourable comparisons with the two previous trips to Delhi and Mumbai, or it could be that my karma was distinctly rattled by being in the Park without permission, but there were far fewer birds than I’d expected (warblers were very few and far between, for instance, I saw no flycatchers, and only a handful of raptors). Most references to Guindy on the web mention special birds like Indian Pitta and Blue-faced Malkoha, but sadly neither of these were to be found (Indian Pitta would have leapt to the top of my “Best of the Year so far” ahead of Indian Courser if one had only showed…).

 

No, I saw none of these…

 

What there was was beautiful, exotic (for me anyway), and totally worth seeing of course. Highlights included long views of a circling pale-phase Booted Eagle (a relatively small eagle that is typically found in this sort of habitat, and that I only rarely get to see and could watch for hours given the chance), two over-wintering Eurasian Golden Orioles, three species of sunbird (Purple, Crimson-rumped, and Loten’s), and a flock of 22 Yellow-wattled Lapwings, a species I searched for and missed round Delhi.

 

Pale-phase Booted Eagle Hieraaetus pennatus

 

Adult female or 1^st summer male Golden Oriole Oriolus oriolus

 

Yellow-wattled Lapwing Vanellus malabaricus

 

Male (upper) and female (lower, carrying nesting material) Purple Sunbird Nectarinia asiatica

 

Other typical birds included a non-adult Oriental Honey Buzzard flying over, good numbers of both White-browed Bulbuls and Yellow-billed Babblers, an immature Large Cuckoo Shrike, and a male of the widespread woodpecker species Black-rumped Flameback which dropped into a tree right next me before scuttling up into the branches giving me a Jochen-type problem that I could find no way around (still, I’ve taken worse photos so it’s worth posting anyway).

 

Oriental Honey Buzzard Pernis ptilorhynchus

 

Black-rumped Flameback Dinopium benghalense

 

White-browed Bulbul Pycnonotus luteolus

 

Perhaps where places like Guindy really come into their own is when you take the time to put the binoculars down, close your eyes, and listen to the birdsound around you. I’m a long way from being even remotely proficient at ID’ing India’s birds by their calls alone (except perhaps for the well-known “brainfever…brainfever…BRAINFEVER” of the Common Hawk Cuckoo which is unmistakeable), but sometimes it hardly matters. I’m a long way from being an even remotely proficient sound recordist either - but I’ve uploaded a couple of short recordings I made to give you a flavour of what Guindy sounds like (when the planes from the nearby International Airport aren’t flying over anyway…).

 

• Click to download Forest Sounds (.wma format, 400kb)
• Click to download Common Hawk Cuckoo calling (.wma format, 400kb)

 

One of the commoner sounds at Guindy (and in fact in woodlands all over large parts of Asia) is the characteristically soft “pop pop pop” of the beautiful little Coppersmith Barbet that starts up towards the end of the soundfile above. A green and yellow gem of a bird with blazing red crown, throat, and legs, and a huge bill it uses to pluck fruit off the trees they are always found in, the bird is named after the supposed resemblance of the call to the sound a coppersmith’s hammer makes when he’s working…I’ve never heard a real coppersmith so I can’t vouch for the accuracy of the analogy but it’s a lovely sound that carries a surprisingly long way, particularly when two birds duet together.

 

Coppersmith Barbet Megalaima haemacephala

 

• Click to download Coppersmith Barbets calling (.wma format, 600kb)

 

So, all things considered not too bad a day really. In the next few weeks I’m due to visit Los Angeles, Seattle, Singapore, and Sydney - so there should be a few more posts to come. Of course by then you may all be used to Mike’s glowing prose and silvery use of syllables in his pile of promised Guatemala posts and may no longer be interested…but I’ll write them anyway!

 

Day List (new for the Year underlined):
Oriental Honey Buzzard Pernis ptilorhynchus 1; Black Kite Milvus migrans 5+; Shikra Accipiter badius 3; Booted Eagle Hieraaetus pennatus 1; Yellow-wattled Lapwing Vanellus malabaricus 21; Red-wattled Lapwing Vanellus indicus 1; Spotted Dove Streptopelia chinensis 8-10; Ring-necked Parakeet Psittacula krameri 3-4; Common Hawk-cuckoo Cuculus varius 1+; Common Koel Eudynamys scolopacea 1+; Asian Palm Swift Cypsiurus balasiensis 4-5; Blue-tailed Bee-eater Merops philippinus 4; Coppersmith Barbet Megalaima haemacephala 3-4; Black-rumped Flameback Dinopium benghalense 1; Large Cuckooshrike Coracina macei 1; White-browed Bulbul Pycnonotus luteolus c)10; Red-vented Bulbul Pycnonotus cafer 4-5; Blyth’s Reed Warbler Acrocephalus dumetorum 5-6; Common Tailorbird Orthotomus sutorius 3-4; Yellow-billed Babbler Turdoides affinis c)10; Purple-rumped Sunbird Nectarinia zeylonica 5-6; Purple Sunbird Nectarinia asiatica c)10; Loten’s Sunbird Nectarinia lotenia 4-5; Golden Oriole Oriolus oriolus 2; Black Drongo Dicrurus macrocercus 3; Rufous Treepie Dendrocitta vagabunda 3; House Crow Corvus splenden +; Common Myna Acridotheres tristis 3-4; Brahminy Starling Sturnus pagodarum 2