Birding with Ram Gopalakrishnan: 2016

When I heard of an upcoming birdwatching trip to Walong in Arunachal Pradesh on the Chinese border where you can see some Chinese species, I jumped at the offer: unlike humans, birds don't know borders and certainly don't need visas.

The drive due east from Dibrugarh airport was through typically congested Assamese towns and it was with relief that we checked in at the Golden Pagoda eco-resort in Chowkham and enjoyed a warm shower: we were forewarned that it might be our last for the next few days! A brown hawk owl attracted the attention of our flashlights with its persistent loud calls, and yielded our first sighting and my first lifer.

"Straight shot to Walong" was the agenda for the day so as to get there before sunset and it meant a 5 am start and a twelve hour drive. The long drawn out whoop of hoolock gibbons and a flock of beautiful sibias (that's the actual name) greeted us as we crossed Wakro into the Kamlang Wildlife Sanctuary. Of course protection is largely in name throughout the northeast where bird hunting is a traditional way of life. Most of the local men carried guns and many kids carried catapults in much the same way a city child may carry a cricket bat. A boy with a catapult proudly showed us his catch for the day: a large niltava, a lovely deep blue Himalayan endemic. He then took a few shots at a group of striated laughingthrushes, luckily missing them. Tomorrow's lunch however, I fear.

A breakfast of hot Maggi and boiled eggs helped fortify ourselves against the howling wind at Parasuram Kund where the road crosses the river Lohit, one of the main tributaries of the Brahmaputra and our constant companion all the way to the border. The wind tunnel formed by the valley forced us to roll our jacket collars up and monkey caps down. A pair of short billed minivets displayed their orange plumage in bright sunlight, but that's all we had time to stop for on the bumpy roads. A finch spotting intrigued us as it looked like nothing in the books: new to India or even better, new to science, we day-dreamed. After all the bird life in this border area has been poorly documented and there was a distinct possibility of our encountering new species or migrants from across the border. Moreover most previous birding reports from there were from the summer months, hardly anybody having come here in winter. After more Maggi for lunch (was there famine in the northeast when it was off the shelves recently?), we reached Walong well after dark and rested our road-battered bodies in the surprisingly comfortable Inspection Bungalow.

Rare Chinese species beckon tomorrow but as they say about a tiger forest, go without expectations of seeing a tiger and you'll enjoy it that much more. Some say that's true of life itself!

We drove quickly up to Helmet Top at daybreak, which at 2250 m is 1000 m above Walong: it is reportedly named after the finding of numerous helmets there after the heavy casualties suffered by poorly equipped but courageous Indian forces who fought to the last bullet in the 1962 Indo-China war. Indeed a memorial to the fallen soldiers there reads "they lacked everything but guts". The army outpost soldiers were kind enough to offer us first hot drinking water and then piping hot delicious tea, perfect for the biting cold, while they leafed through our bird book in return! Walong was an important battleground in the war, and retains its strategic importance, with a tarmac runway and plenty of army presence. "Lest we forget" read the sign above the the airstrip. We joked about flying in next time, rather than the arduous twelve hour drive on bad roads.

Helmet Top is largely a coniferous zone on account of its altitude and we were greeted by the spotted nutcracker and the Eurasian jay, typical species for this habitat. A Himalayan buzzard posed for photos on the way up. The Yunnan nuthatch, our first Chinese tourist, yielded itself briefly, followed by a pair of lovely grey-headed bullfinches. The rare chestnut-vented nuthatch was photographed from close quarters.

As the mid-morning sun beat down, the forest became quiet: birdlife in coniferous forests is much less abundant, if rarer, than in lower altitudes. Long arguments followed on account of the potential presence of Chinese look-alikes in the area: lemon-rumped or Chinese warbler, spot-winged or dark-rumped rosefinch? Which bird guide to the Indian subcontinent is more accurate, Pamela Rasmussen's or Grimmett and Inskip's?

As we headed back somewhat bored to the Inspection Bungalow, a whistling call made us stop and check: there was the spot-breasted parrotbill, a rare little cutie seen only here and in Nagaland, seen without playback! Photos and whoops of delight preceded a quick lunch at the IB: it gets dark by 5pm here and we wanted to maximise our birding time. Just as we were getting back into our vehicles, lo and behold were three of our five target Chinese tourists, all right at our doorstep: the bandit like black-browed bushtit, a large flock of black-headed greenfinches and Godlewski's bunting! As they say, when it rains, it pours. Plans for car travel were quickly abandoned and we spent the rest of the day looking at and photographing these prize catches. In fact, Grimmett and Inskip's bird guide doesn't even list them as regular Indian species. A memorable birding day, and to top it off we were even provided hot water for a warm bath. Only the Derbyan parakeet left for the morrow among our five Chinese tourists.

A morning drive to Kibithu about 30km further down, right on the border with China, to see the Derbyan parakeet was the pre-breakfast menu. As we stepped into a field to check out a group of chestnut-eared buntings, a hen harrier, pristine white except for black wing tips and trailing wing edge, twisted and turned just above ground level. Typical harrier behaviour: they fly close to the ground and quarter their prey unlike most raptors which glide on wind currents high above. A flock of red crossbills with their unique overlapping bills was added gleefully to the lifer list.

We were told to scan the tops of the conifers for a huge parakeet with a large red bill and a prominent neck band: named after Lord Derby in colonial times. Apparently they are heavily sought after for the pet parakeet market, and many photographs are from specimens in zoos. Although more common in the Walong area in summer, seeing them in February would call for a huge slice of luck.

Well, we found a flock of a dozen or so birds well before Kibithu! High fives followed (literally) for having ticked off all five of the Chinese specialties we were after. We promptly turned our vehicles around and did some forest birding near a stream resulting in sightings of the fire-breasted flowerpecker and the silver-eared mesia, both stunningly colored birds that do justice to their names. Though our stomachs felt otherwise, we returned for lunch like men who had satiated themselves at a feast!

After lunch we left Walong, and started on the long road back: night halt was at Hawai, the district headquarters. Some say it takes its name after the bone chilling "hawa", located as it is on the only relatively flat area in this area: Walong being used mainly by the military.

21 lifers so far and forest birding yet to start!

We dashed pell-mell to Udayak pass, apparently an excellent spot for broadleaved forest birds, ignoring with difficulty the numerous laughingthrushes flitting seductively across the road: white-crested, chestnut-crowned and striated were all glimpsed. A majestic black eagle wheeled for a long time above us, but we mostly had to content ourselves with quintessential Himalayan foothill scenery: steep forested hillsides above and crystal clear river below flowing through a rocky bed.

Udayak pass was a letdown. Being six hours from Hawai meant that we got there only in the afternoon, with overcast skies to boot. A glimpse of the greater rufous-headed parrotbill was the highlight, though yuhinas and two barbet species were also seen. We resolved to come back tomorrow if possible, and headed on to Chowkham which was another four hours away, and the only place with reasonable accomodation.

Threats to nature rear their ugly head even in this remote and idyllic area. Hunting of birds and animals is widespread. We saw huge tree trunks being trucked out and forest fires. Besides, the army is developing the area from Walong to the border in a big way on account of its strategic importance, and there is widespread disturbance there on account of construction and road widening. The area could certainly do with more official protected area status to minimise these threats: but do the Derbyan parakeet and the other jewels of this area ever get mention in the Ministry of Environment and Forests' corridors, let alone any other ministry's?

Back in phone and Internet range after four days of blissful silence: now do I really want that?

Not having done justice to the foothills, we headed back towards open forest near Wakro at daybreak. It became much like 20-20 cricket: calls everywhere, rapid fire sightings, barbets creating a background racket, blink and miss a species. Nikhil Bhopale, our host and group leader, seemed to have eyes at the back of his head as he spotted a magnificent crested goshawk perched close to its nest: we took care not to disturb it. A banded bay cuckoo, with its characteristic supercilium, was heard for a long time before it was traced down. The ashy and white throated bulbuls eclipsed their commoner red vented cousin. Large and small niltavas, deep blue flycatchers with a characteristic shoulder patch, showed up as did four varieties of drongos. Breakfast was an exercise in multi-tasking: sandwich in one hand, binoculars in the other, egg in mouth and eyes peering to detect the latest arrival. Nobody was complaining however!

Next up was the drudgery of a five hour drive to Digboi, our base for the next two nights. In the afternoon, we decided to try our luck in some dense undergrowth for some rarer laughingthrush species, but between looking apprehensively at the elephant dung (was one round the corner?) and the leeches on the ground (any on us?), we didn't exactly look up for the birdlife. Guess the laughingthrushes had the last laugh.

The loudspeaker-like kok-kok-kok of the peacock pheasant boomed resonantly across the forest, seemingly around the bend in the road. As we waited with bated breath for this lifer of a lifetime to come into view, time seemed to stand still. This large, near impossible to see but widely heard pheasant is on the dream wish-list of every northeast birder. Alas, the calls died down: in my next avatar maybe.

We were in the pocket sized powerhouse called the Dihing-Patkai Sanctuary near Jeypore. The weather gods had decided to play the averages and it was all misty and gloomy. In the northeast you have to bird as much with your ears as with your eyes. Our guide Jayanta Manna seemed to have a bird call microchip installed in his brain: not a single time was playback used. Birding was like batting in fading light. The opener was the clown-like long-tailed broadbill with yellow neck, black monkey cap, yellow ear patch and broad bill: a flock of half a dozen kept us enthralled and clicking away for a full 10 minutes. Next up was a white-browed piculet, a tiny stunner from the woodpecker family. In the middle order were a white-tailed robin, almost confused with the similar looking female white-tailed flycatcher and the rare bay woodpecker which appeared after its commoner and smaller rufous cousin. A pale blue flycatcher and a black backed forktail literally brought up the tail of the visit.

Digboi is known to most of us from our geography studying days as the oldest oilfield in India. Like a grand old lady, "she ain't what she used to be". The production methods may be antiquated but there was a certain colonial laissez-faire about the ancient machines, the neat roads, the officers’ quarters and the slow pace of life in general. We headed to the reserved forest around the refinery, having the reputation for good birding as also one of the highest elephant densities in the area. With our "hathi protection insurance", namely our two Scorpios following closely behind, we strolled along the forest road: the poor weather and light put paid to our hopes of adding to our list. A couple of elephant warning rumbles from the dense undergrowth close by soon sent us scurrying to the vehicles and put an end to birding early. We consoled ourselves with hot chai and fresh pakoras. 38 lifers for me in the last week, that's surely a record that won't be broken on future trips.

Till the next trip, that is!

Asian barred owlet

Beautiful sibia

Black browed bushtit by Nikhil Bhopale

Black eagle by Nikhil Bhopale

Black-chinned yuhina by Nikhil Bhopale

Black-headed greenfinch by Nikhil Bhopale

Blue-fronted redstart

Chestnut-vented nuthatch by Nikhil Bhopale

Crested goshawk

Derbyan parakeet by Nikhil Bhopale

Fire-breasted flowerpecker by Nikhil Bhopale

Godlewski's bunting by Nikhil Bhopale

Yellow throated barbet by Nikhil Bhopale

Green-backed tit by Nikhil Bhopale

Grey-headed bullfinch

Himalayan buzzard

Long-tailed broadbill

Maroon oriole by Nikhil Bhopale

Pale blue flycatcher by Nikhil Bhopale

Red crossbill by Nikhil Bhopale

Black-browed bushtit by Nikhil Bhopale

Chestnut-eared bunting by Nikhil Bhopale

Hen harrier

Striated bulbul

Spot-breasted parrotbill by Nikhil Bhopale

The road to Walong

View of the Lohit flood plain

The easternmost airstrip in India

At Walong, troops lacked everything except guts

White-browed piculet by Nikhil Bhopale

White-naped yuhina by Nikhil Bhopale

White-tailed robin by Nikhil Bhopale

I gulped in the clear and cold desert air and couldn't help marveling at the amazing convenience of modern travel. At 5 am, I was breathing the humid Chennai air and here I was five hours later in the middle of Kutch: a direct flight to Ahmedabad and a 2 hour drive from the airport was all it took.

The iconic resident

The Wild Ass Sanctuary on the Little Rann would be our destination for the next three days, a desert habitat named after its iconic resident. I'm all for icons‎: just as Kaziranga has its rhinos and Gir its lions as the flagship species found there and nowhere else, having a large mammal as an emblem can help conserve the habitat and its lesser denizens effectively as politicians and tourists understand large animals much better than small birds. This former sea bed was part of the Gulf of Kutch a few hundred years ago, but is now a dry salty plain for most of the year, filling in during monsoons and home to numerous species including flamingoes that breed here. The area has numerous shallow water bodies that attract a number of migratory ducks and waders, Kutch being bang in the middle of their migratory flight to southern latitudes.

More than just dotted lines

Most maps just show the Rann as dotted lines over a large area: a tantalising invitation to explore it. We set up camp at Bhajana, a village on the fringe‎ of the Rann and spent the first couple of days on the edges of the sanctuary, scouring the numerous water bodies. Everything is grey: the sand, the birds and the mammals which are all accordingly camouflaged. Common cranes and wild asses were everywhere. An auspicious start was provided by a sighting of a magnificent short-eared owl on the ground under a bush: some superstitious people actually consider an owl sighting inauspicious! A Sykes's nightjar whose location was jealously protected by our local guide was the second lifer to follow, impossibly camouflaged despite its large size. In fact our guide deliberately drove away when another group approached, and came back later so as to protect "our" bird's location!

Duck diary

A single lake revealed numerous species: common teal, Northern shoveller, tufted duck, gadwall, Northern pintail and ruddy shelduck. ‎We learnt how upending ducks feeds on vegetation just underwater while diving ducks go much deeper in search of fish.

Hyena hideout

We visited a hyena den, a unique crossword of tunnels under an elevated mound flanked by telltale signs of recent meals: a skull of a nilgai, skin of a dog and numerous bones. Though there were fresh drag marks, the hyenas were either away or underground. We contented ourselves later with a sighting of two Indian foxes as they scampered away on seeing our vehicles.

Pink islands on a sea of gold

Sunset over a lake on the Rann was the stuff of fairy tales: as the sun went down in a giant orange ball, turning the water to gold, the flamingos formed a linear island‎ of pink on the right. And not just flamingos: pelicans, black winged stilts, egrets, spoonbills and ducks all were there. Harriers, raptors that quarter their prey, roosted nearby: we were told the differences between male and female, and between the pallid, the Marsh and Montagu's harriers. An enormous flock of greylag geese kept their distance when we attempted to get closer to photograph them. Watching the sun go down with the only background sound being the faint clucking of the birds was a sight to die for: pity we couldn't line the flamingos up with the setting sun to get the photo of a lifetime!

Sir, a malkoha lifer!

The sirkeer malkoha was our first sighing on day two. It patiently waited for us gleeful photographers to finish clicking. Shortly afterwards, a bluethroat posed nearby for close ups of its blue throat, allowing us to really enjoy the breakfast shortly afterwards. Wheatear class followed: the desert, variable and Isabelline species all having a wheat colored spot near their ear. The greater short-toed larks glittered in the sun in groups of 20-30 as they banked at great speed, while the crested lark and ashy crowned sparrow-lark allowed close up pbotos.

The end of the road‎ and the middle of nowhere

We started off in early morning on the final day and headed deep into the Rann. At one point the ‎tar road literally ends: after that it's just one vast cracked salt pan, an off-roader's paradise. As our vehicles zoomed across the open landscape into the middle of nowhere, we wondered how the drivers knew where they were going and more importantly, how they were going to find their way back. There's a real thrill in this for city slickers like us: no traffic, no road, no rules, no speed limit and certainly nobody honking. Not that we got too much time to think, the wind chill literally driving the bitter desert cold into our bones. Even taking a hand out of a glove to check the bird book was a mistake! As our driver flattened the accelerator on the Rann with nothing but sand on all sides, the experience was exhilarating, but you have to be careful. In our eagerness to get to an abandoned flamingo nesting colony, we found our vehicle suddenly immobile: the mud had become too wet. We wished for a moment we were in a four wheel drive Gypsy, but a brief push helped us retrace our tracks to firmer ground.

Darshan of a cryptic inhabitant

So engrossed were we in ‎this amazing habitat, that it was something of a surprise when we stopped at a temple courtyard right in the middle of the Rann. While pilgrims thronged the temple, we scouted around in the trees in the compound for our own darshan. After much searching, our guide triumphantly found it: the Pallid Scops owl, a little sleeping beauty that lazily half opened one eye at the gaggle of photographers below. The curious pilgrims soon came over for this 'side darshan'. To each, his or her own God!

Rustling up raptors

Raptors were found roosting on the ground, in the few bushes that were there ‎and of course soaring overhead. The booted and tawny eagle, the griffon vulture, the peregrine falcon and the common kestrel were all ticked off. While reasonable to identify on the ground, flying raptor identification remains a blind spot, however much the differences between these in was drilled into me: need a raptor class one day. Of course sorting out the tiny warbler species is out of the question: that class will take even longer to materialise!

All is not well even in this desert paradise

The usual culprits were all there: creeping human habitations thanks to population pressure and sturdier vehicles, salt production in the Rann, temple tourism and of course Prosopis julliflora, the invasive alien weed which dominates much of the landscape wiping out endemic species. However a more modern issue is water from the Narmada which is now used to irrigate much of the area surrounding the Rann, and which threatens to permanently alter the unique dry habitat.

We did miss out on a few endemics found in few other places: the Macqueens bustard, the greater hoopoe lark and the Indian courser.‎ Can't be greedy, I guess.Our perambulations on the Rann had pushed us dangerously beyond our scheduled departure time, and we barely made our flight after a frenzied dash to the airport!