Standby time again and after three days of staring out of a hotel window onto a wet car park - and seeing no birds - while I waited for the airline’s scheduling team to give me a ring (it’s very glamorous sometimes this airline job of mine) I finally got a call: a ‘night-stop’ (ie a 24 hour layover) in Delhi, northern India. The last time I went to Delhi was back in August last year when I’d just gone back to work after being off for six weeks with ‘a bad back’ (like someone had speared my lower back and was wiggling the shaft every time I moved) and hadn’t left the room except to photograph some lovely insects in the hotel garden. Quite interesting really, but this time I’m in a Big Year competition with a colleague (Graham Langley, who was ahead after a good trip to New York), and I was determined things were going to be very different indeed…

Most first-time visitors to India will probably pitch up in Delhi at some point. It’s convenient for visits to places like Agra and the Taj Mahal, its airport is the central hub for flights all over the sub-continent, and - from a birding point of view - numerous parks and accessible birding sites make it an excellent place to start a trip. Migrants from eastern Europe and northern Asia pour into northern India for the winter (which is generally mild and very comfortable for anyone from a temperate climate), and a number of otherwise very tricky species - more of which later of course - are easy to see with a little effort.

From my point of view the number of sites actually makes choosing a Big Year strategy pretty difficult. With just twelve hours of daylight available to me - and truly horrible traffic to get tangled up in if I try to criss-cross Delhi itself - do I:

• try to mop up as many common species as possible by going to local parks and the Yamuna River, but then risk seeing them many times again on other flying visits through the year (there is plenty of overlap with common species in Delhi, Mumbai, and Chennai despite them being so far apart)?
• aim to find localised birds just in case I don’t get back here again this year and don’t get another chance to see them?
• or concentrate on winter visitors that I almost certainly won’t see anywhere else this year, but in doing so miss out on a good number of the commoner residents which I’ll have to hope I can see later in the year assuming I’ll be in India again in the next eleven months?

I suspect most readers won’t sympathise with my happy dilemma at all - a day in India would be good whatever birds you see of course - but perhaps the more hard-core listers amongst you will understand the mix of excitement and anxiety a quick visit like this engenders (particularly as I needed to do something spectacular to keep Graham at bay). No? I’ll not mention it again then…

What I decided on was to go for the winter visitors, and get some local specials too. The plan? To get a hotel taxi for the day (I’ve never self-driven here and never will - you’ll know why if you’ve ever visited India) and head south to the famous Sultanpur Jheel (jheel = lake) and its wintering waterbirds (and hopefully Indian Courser) for the morning, then head back towards Delhi stopping at Asola Bhatti Wildlife Sanctuary (principally for Rufous-fronted Prinia) and the ruins at Tughlakabad Fort (for Eagle Owl and Yellow-wattled Lapwing) before getting back to the hotel just after dark and my flight home again at midnight. A sound enough plan I figured - the one drawback being that we wouldn’t actually get to our hotel after the flight from London until 03:00a.m., which meant either a catnap for an hour or so or watch BBC News to find out about the accident at Heathrow involving a BA 777 that we’d found out about when we’d landed. BBC News won. I figured after three days stuck in a hotel doing very little I’d be fine without any sleep…

Sultanpur Jheel, early morning. Yes, you need a telescope. No, I don’t have one…

Sultanpur Jheel lies about 30miles/48km south of Delhi in Haryana State (which is important as many regular Delhi taxis don’t have permits to operate in Haryana). Once a temporary lake created by monsoon run-off, thanks to pressure by Peter Jackson 359 acres was declared a Bird Sanctuary in 1971 and was upgraded to the status of National Park in 1991 by the Haryana Government. Three quarters of the total area at Sultanpur is marshy and the rest is open areas covered with ‘babul’ (Acacia spp ) trees which are fantastic for wintering passerines and Yellow-fronted Woodpecker. Islands have been created for nesting birds, and the bird list for this tiny place stands (according to an online list published by Bill Harvey) at a remarkable 320+ - no doubt because many active Delhi birders work the area regularly (picking up rarities like Lesser White-front and White-browed Bushchat). Whilst the Park is relatively quiet during the week (you’ll never be alone in India no matter where you go, and groups of noisy students start arriving from about 10:00am most weekdays) it can - apparently - get very busy here at weekends and holidays.

Having said that most people do congregate near the entrance buildings/information centre, and if you’re prepared to walk in a long rectangle all the way around the jheel (on a raised path laid with faded bricks which has blended beautifully into the habitat) you do get well away from everyone else (which is how I prefer things, my friends). Especially if you’re the first into the Park and it’s not quite 07:00 and only just getting light.

From the entrance gate the main path goes right (anticlockwise) to the jheel or left (clockwise) into the first area of acacias. I dived into the acacias and was soon surrounded by calls I either hadn’t heard before or couldn’t remember even if I had: very frustrating. There were some calls I knew of course (at least once I’d been reminded by seeing the bird that was calling) and amongst the first birds I saw were Hume’s Leaf Warblers, Lesser Whitethroats (the brown-backed race blythi), the gorgeous rufiventris race of Black Redstart, and Red-breasted Flycatchers, including one beautiful breeding-plumaged male (Red-throated/Taiga Flycatcher is listed as being common, but I didn’t see one).

Male Black Redstart Phoenicurus ochruros rufiventris (left) and
Red-breasted Flycatcher Ficedula parva

Turning right at the first obvious junction the path goes along one edge of the jheel with some dry open fields to the left. How long these fields will remain dry and dusty is anyone’s guess as the surrounding countryside is disappearing under oilseed rape, but for the moment they are good for a number of birds including pipits (I saw Tawny, Long-billed, and Paddyfield), larks (Small/Oriental Skylark), and ‘edge’ birds like Grey Francolin, babblers (Common and Large Grey), shrikes (Long-tailed and Bay-backed), ‘Siberian’ Stonechat (maura), and prinias (Plain and Ashy). Within about twenty minutes I’d seen some other excellent species too - all of which, like the above, were new for the year of course - including Painted Storks flying up from the jheel, my only cranes of the day (three Sarus Cranes, leaving for feeding areas outside the Park), small groups of Indian Peafowl, and a couple of wintering Bluethroats. Not a bad way to greet the dawn really…

Female Indian Peafowl Pavo cristatus

Ashy Prinia Prinia socialis (left) and Plain Prinia Prinia inornata

Bluethroat Luscinia svecica

Following the jheel this way round does mean that you aren’t getting close views of the water, especially when you walk further down the path towards the southern end which is mostly grassland and more fields. However there are still plenty of birds to look for in the fields, and I added European migrants like Hoopoe, Wryneck, Western Yellow Wagtail, and Tree Pipit, and some lovely Indian specials like Red Avadavat, a cracking male Pied Bushchat, a group of Ashy-crowned Sparrow-larks, and the first of many Indian Robins.

Hoopoe Upupa epops

Wryneck Jynx torquilla

Male Indian Robin Saxicoloides fulicata

Male Pied Bushchat Saxicola caprata

By the time I had walked most of the way back to the entrance gates I finally found a good spot to look over the water. Having only been able to hear and glimpse some typically noisy Greylag Geese and a few Spot-billed Ducks and Common Teal so far, it was a relief to finally get a chance to scan through the ‘gathered multitudes’ - ie many hundreds of ducks (large numbers of Shovelers in particular) and a tight pack of beautiful Bar-headed Geese (a species I haven’t seen for about twenty years), one lanky Black-necked Stork, small numbers of Black-winged Stilts (no other waders oddly), and a few Purple Swamphens in amongst the more common Coots and Moorhens. The notice board at the entrance gates had mentioned Garganey and Ferruginous Duck but no matter how hard I looked I couldn’t get close to even stringing one of either species - and with the sun now in my eyes and a haze rising off the water like a fine mist I gave up trying and chalked those two species off the list of ‘potentials’. More disappointingly (as I hadn’t expected either of the two ducks) was the lack of pelicans. I’d thought that pelicans were regular winterers here, but the solid line indicating “no sightings” on the same board corrected that notion. However, I did get lucky when what I thought was an immature White-tailed Eagle but what I was later assured was a Pallas’s Fish Eagle drifted lazily by (UPDATE: it WAS a White-tailed Eagle - see below), and the only Comb Ducks I saw flew over the jheel in a wide circle before dropping back into whatever unviewable corner of the lake they’d risen from in the first place.

Bar-headed Goose Anser indicus: a Himalayan migrant, most of the world’s population winters
in India and Pakistan after breeding around mountain lakes in central Asia.

Greylag Goose Anser anser: the archetypal “grey goose” from which almost every
barnyard goose is distantly related.

Comb Duck Sarkidiornis melanotos

1st or 2nd year White-tailed Eagle Haliaeetus albicilla:
the original image I took showed a tiny dot - after much careful zooming, sharpening, playing with levels etc
the resulting bird is clearly a White-tailed Eagle. Fortunately I’ve since
found that this bird has already been recorded and id’d eg http://dreamsandimaginations.blogspot.com/

While I’d been out (enjoying myself hugely I should add) the first students had begun arriving, and I’d passed by several very long trains of loud schoolkids (loud but polite). I’d also stopped adding new birds - which always causes the “should I stay, or should I go” dilemma to raise its head. On the one hand I’d seen the bulk of the birds I’d hoped for, but had definitely missed a fair few that (according to the info I had) I should have picked up. The next site I planned to visit - Asola Bhatti - was also a dry acacia woodland area where I could hope for a similar set of passerines (plus the very local Rufous-fronted Prinia), but obviously there’d be no chance of cranes or my “most-wanted” bird, Indian Courser - a fast-declining, beautiful bird of wide, dry fields and plains that I’d never seen before.

I decided to give Sultanur a little more time. I spent another twenty minutes going through the acacias I’d first gone into in the early morning - finding Long-tailed Minivet and Olive-backed Pipit but not much else (apart from the ladder in the image below going up into a tree for no apparent purpose whatsoever - a state I was beginning to find myself slipping towards as well).

Somewhere close by, I knew, were feeding Common and Demoiselle Cranes, neither of which I was likely to see
anywhere else in the year. Those were the birds I ought to be looking for. What I needed though was someone who spoke enough english to understand my question - “Where do the cranes feed please?” - and who was enough of a birder to know the answer. In one of those “You really are a fortunate b*****d aren’t you” moments, one of the student’s teachers nodded a hello and said good morning in that beautifully accented voice that middle-class Indians have, and - well, if I’m being honest - I pounced! I explained what I was looking for, and she nodded again and said that the person I needed to speak to was Sanjay Sharma, a local guide, who just happened to be coming up the path to get paid for leading her group around! Perfect…

The cranes, unfortunately, were widely scattered this year because of the dry weather, Sanjay explained, and the “marshy area” I’d heard about nearby was overgrown and not being used. He apologised, but by way of making it up to me asked if I’d seen the roosting Collared Scops Owl some fifty feet away? That would be a ‘no’, I said, and thirty seconds later I was looking at a real bonus bird, the gorgeous owl in the photo below as it perched in a creeper with its ear tufts flattened against the building and one eye kept warily on passers-by. I’d walked right past - as I suspect anyone else would have done - thinking that nothing of interest would be right in the centre of all the student comings-and-goings…

Collared (Indian) Scops Owl Otus bakkamoena.
(Some recent lists have split this widespread Asian species, with birds on the subcontinent
being called “Indian Scops Owl”. For the Big Year I’m following the
IOC list which includes the taxon in “Collared Scops Owl”.)

As we walked back up the path Sanjay and I chatted about the birds I’d seen - and the ones I’d missed. Had I, he inquired, found Indian Courser, because he’d come back from seeing a group of eight earlier in the morning just ten minutes down the road? Holy heck and all things sacred! That would be another “no”, I said. He had a spare hour before his next clients arrived if I’d like to see them - plus other birds in the same area like Eurasian Stone-curlew and Isabelline Wheatear. Would I ever. We settled on a quickly negotiated fee and with Sanjay in the front of the taxi, our driver sped us off towards the coursers.

I’m going to cut a very long story short at this point and say that, just as Sanjay had promised we did indeed find the Indian Coursers. Not eight though - but TEN of them. I wish I could provide you with stunning close-up photographs of these intoxicatingly beautiful birds - taking delicate steps on long-legs, coloured a deep chestnut with a dazzlingly bright “V” of white feathers arrowing down the nape - but a) they’re wary anyway, and b) the site is one of the only ones in the area were they still breed (they’ve lost huge amounts of habitat to agriculture), so I contented myself with long but distant views. It’s only January of course but if I see a better bird this year I’ll be a very happy man indeed. Seeing them so well after so many years was made all the more wonderful by the fact that the site seemed to be full of Short-toed Larks as well, a carpet of birds that lifted into the air whenever the local Kestrel made a pass. And there were indeed two Isabelline Wheatears and the promised wide-eyed Stone-curlews (an extremely difficult bird to get to in the UK where just a few pairs now breed each year). I probably paid Sanjay well over the odds (he seemed happy anyway), but it was well worth it.

Indian Courser Cursorius coromandelicus: beautiful, what more can you say…

Eurasian Stone Curlew Burhinus oedicnemus

We dropped Sanjay back at Sultanpur soon after, and I figured now would be a good time to make the hour or so journey back towards Delhi and Asola Bhatti. I was hot, happy, and very tired. Would you mind, I mimed to the driver, if I dozed? Would you mind, sir, if I had the radio on to listen to the Test Match between India and Australia? Not at all, my friend, not at all…seems an extremely civilised way to travel if you ask me…

Part Two of this very good day will be coming soon…

Day List (includes Asola, new birds for the year underlined):
Grey Francolin Francolinus pondicerianus 10+; Jungle Bush Quail Perdicula asiatica 1; Indian Peafowl Pavo cristatus c)20; Greylag Goose Anser anser 200+; Bar-headed Goose Anser indicus 100+; Comb Duck Sarkidiornis melanotos 7; Eurasian Wigeon Anas penelope 100+; Spot-billed Duck Anas poecilorhyncha 100+; Northern Shoveler Anas clypeata 100+; Northern Pintail Anas acuta 10+; Common Teal Anas crecca 100+; Painted Stork Mycteria leucocephala c)100; Black-necked Stork Ephippiorhynchus asiaticus 1; Black-headed Ibis Threskiornis melanocephalus c)20; Eurasian Spoonbill Platalea leucorodia 2; Indian Pond Heron Ardeola grayii 3; Cattle Egret Bubulcus ibis 20+; Grey Heron Ardea cinerea 2-3; Great Egret Ardea alba 3-4; Little Egret Egretta garzetta 1+; Little Cormorant Phalacrocorax niger 3-4; Common Kestrel Falco tinnunculus 1; Peregrine Falcon Falco peregrinus 1; Oriental Honey Buzzard Pernis ptilorhynchus 1; Black-shouldered Kite Elanus caeruleus 2; Black Kite Milvus migrans c)10; White-tailed Eagle Haliaeetus albicilla 2; Crested Serpent-eagle Spilornis cheela 1; Western Marsh Harrier Circus aeruginosus 2; Shikra Accipiter badius 1; Purple Swamphen Porphyrio porphyrio c )10; Common Moorhen Gallinula chloropus 20+; Common Coot Fulica atra 50+; Sarus Crane Grus antigone 3; Eurasian Stone Curlew Burhinus oedicnemus 6; Black-winged Stilt Himantopus himantopus c)10; Red-wattled Lapwing Vanellus indicus c)10; Indian Courser Cursorius coromandelicus 10; Feral Pigeon Columba livia +; Eurasian Collared Dove Streptopelia decaocto c)20; Laughing Dove Streptopelia senegalensis 20+; Ring-necked Parakeet Psittacula krameri +; Greater Coucal Centropus sinensis 2; Collared (Indian) Scops Owl Otus bakkamoena 1; Hoope Upupa epops 3; White-breasted Kingfisher Halcyon smyrnensis 2; Eurasian Wryneck Jynx torquilla 1; Yellow-fronted Woodpecker Dendrocopos mahrattensis 2; Long-tailed Minivet Pericrocotus ethologus 6; Bay-backed Shrike Lanius vittatus 1; Long-tailed Shrike Lanius schach 2; Black Drongo Dicrurus macrocercus c)10; House Crow Corvus splendens +; Pale Martin Riparia diluta 30+; Barn Swallow Hirundo rustica 30+; Western Yellow Wagtail Motacilla flava (beema?) 2; White Wagtail Motacilla alba dukhensis c)20; Paddyfield Pipit Anthus rufulus 2; Tawny Pipit Anthus campestris 2; Long-billed Pipit Anthus similis 1; Olive-backed Pipit Anthus hodgsoni 4; Tree Pipit Anthus trivialis 1; Short-toed Lark Calandrella brachydactyla 100+; Crested Lark Galerida cristata c)10; Oriental Skylark Alauda gulgula 1; Ashy-crowned Sparrow-lark Eremopterix grisea c)20; Rufous-fronted Prinia Prinia buchanani 8; Ashy Prinia Prinia socialis 3-4; Plain Prinia Prinia inornata 10+; Common Tailorbird Orthotomus sutorius 3; Red-whiskered Bulbul Pycnonotus jocosus 3; White-cheeked Bulbul Pycnonotus leucogenys 4; Red-vented Bulbul Pycnonotus cafer c)10; Brook’s Leaf-warbler Phylloscopus subviridis 1; Hume’s Yellow-browed Warbler Phylloscopus humei 5-6; Lesser Whitethroat Sylvia curruca halmodendri 10+; Yellow-eyed Babbler Chrysomma sinense 2; Common Babbler Turdoides caudatus 15-20; Large Grey Babbler Turdoides malcolmi c)10; Bank Myna Acridotheres ginginianus 5; Common Myna Acridotheres tristis +; Bluethroat Luscinia svecica 4; Oriental Magpie-robin Copsychus saularis 4; Indian Robin Saxicoloides fulicata 10+; Black Redstart Phoenicurus ochruros rufiventris c)20; Brown Rock Chat Cercomela fusca 3-4; Siberian Stonechat Saxicola torquatus maura 10+; Pied Bushchat Saxicola caprata 4-5; Isabelline Wheatear Oenanthe isabellina 2; Red-breasted Flycatcher Ficedula parva 5-6; Purple Sunbird Nectarinia asiatica 6; Red Avadavat Amandava amandava 10-12

There is an interesting updated list by a local birder at http://toroid.org/ams/sultanpur