Birding with Ram Gopalakrishnan: January 2022

At the crack of dawn, the sky overhead was thick with birds. Not the pigeons or crows which we city dwellers are accustomed to, but harriers with their distinctive bow shaped wings and narrow tail! As they left from their roosting sites to start their day in the nearby countryside, the sheer number of harriers presented an amazing spectacle perhaps unmatchable anywhere else in the subcontinent.

We were on morning safari at Blackbuck National Park, Velavadar, a convenient three hour drive southwest of Ahmedabad. This pocket size 35 square km reserve is the best place in India for sightings of not just the iconic antelope but also for harriers and the increasingly rare Indian wolf of Rudyard Kipling's Jungle Tales fame. Blackbucks require large open grasslands without interference from humans or cattle, almost impossible to find outside selected protected areas such as Velavadar in a country where grasslands are considered wastelands to be either farmed or industrialized. This erstwhile royal hunting preserve was made a Sanctuary in 1976 and houses an estimated 7000 blackbucks, and a host of other grassland species such as the rare Lesser Florican.

The morning sunlight glistened off the jet black skin of the adult male blackbucks with their long spiral horns, and rendered golden the mauve of the younger males and females. As they leaped across the road in alarm at our approaching vehicle, I wondered whether the authorities had considered Velavadar for reintroduction of the cheetah from Africa: perfect open habitat and excellent prey base, it appears. Nilgai and wild boars dotted the landscape and a jungle cat posed for a photo.

At first I thought it was a jackal, common in Indian forests. Wolf, exclaimed the guide! The much larger than usual “Alsatian” strolled by the roadside and then across it with the casual confidence of an apex predator in its habitat, setting off a frantic bout of filming from us. This was my first ever wolf sighting: finding one in other protected areas is like looking for a needle in a haystack!

As sundown approached, an amazing sight unfolded in front of us. Harriers literally dropped out of the skies on to the grassland and even on the road in front to “park" for the night. The blue print for all harriers is a pale male and a darker female: Montagu's, Pallid and occasional Marsh harriers gave us a real life field lesson in harrier identification, much faster than you can ever learn by poring over a field guide.

Though harriers dominated the raptor list, we encountered a raptor on virtually every large bush or tree: Short-toed Snake Eagle, Greater Spotted Eagle, Common Kestrel, the rare Lesser Kestrel (a personal lifer), White-eyed Buzzard, Shikra and Black-winged Kite. The whoop of Common Cranes made us look up: an apparently never ending line of cranes flew overhead in formation before settling down in the nearby fields. A Long-billed Pipit was a personal lifer. A bird count of 82 attested to the diversity of bird life we encountered, swelled by a water body full of Greater Flamingos, Great White and Dalmatian Pelicans and ducks. A moment of sheer adrenaline was when a female Lesser Florican chose to trot briefly into view! These shy and reclusive birds, now endangered due to habitat loss, are near impossible to see outside the monsoon season: even then only the male is seen during its elaborate jumping courtship display. Rather the icing on the cake!

So if you want to feast your eyes on blackbucks and harriers, and take a chance on tasty titibits like an occasional wolf or Florican, you know where to head!