Birding with Ram Gopalakrishnan: February 2025

The path least trodden has always fascinated me when it comes to birding destinations: one such was the Dosdewa forest in the southern tip of Assam. A chance to see exotics like Van Hasselt's Sunbird, Siberian Blue Robin, Cachar Bulbul, Asian Stubtail and Black-headed Bulbul was just too much to pass up.

We flew into Silchar Airport, a tiny building whose organized chaos resembled a train station rather than an airport, drove west to Karimganj on the Bangladesh border and then further south to our camp. Monotonous cultivation, crowded roads and honking vehicles finally gave way to forest, but it was well after dark when we reached our host Rejoice Gassah's homestay. He worked at the Dept of Biodiversity Documentation at the local Makunda Christian mission hospital, and has set up a small homestay with five rooms for nature tourists. Hot parathas, dal and freshly cooked beans made for a wonderful sleeping pill.

As we waited for the morning fog to lift, we marveled at the beauty of the bamboo forest and winding stream at our side as we walked along the undulating trail. Van Hasselt's and Ruby-cheeked sunbirds showed off their colors and the Scarlet-backed Flowerpecker's scarlet defeated the morning fog. We waded like intrepid Amazonian explorers upstream a rivulet to get to our carefully constructed hide, strategically placed near a couple of puddles where the local residents performed their afternoon ablutions. First up was a Rufous-bellied Niltava, followed by the striking Little Pied flycatcher. I nodded off as nothing showed up for an hour. Just as cramp was catching up and light was fading, a succession of confusingly similar flycatchers showed up for their evening sundowner: Hill Blue, Blue-throated, Pale Blue, Pale-chinned and Snowy-browed. If you thought the males were similar, try differentiating the females!

Next morning, as the fog finally gave way to the sun, out came the Crimson Sunbird. A distant sighting of a pair of Great Slaty Woodpeckers tantalized us, but they did not come any closer. Can anything be rarer than the Great Slaty, we wondered. The answer was yes: a pair of the equally pre-historic looking Large Scimitar-babblers kept up a duet in the undergrowth for a good twenty minutes, frustratingly difficult to see or photograph despite their large size as they flitted about in the dense undergrowth.

A longer walk upstream and a patient wait at a different hide in the afternoon yielded nothing for the first hour and I nodded off like the previous day. “Wake up, doc!” rapidly brought me back to earth in time for three personal lifers. First up was the cute Gray-bellied Tesia with its constant trilling. Then followed Mr and Mrs Siberian Blue Robin, a handsome couple by any fashion standards and finally a Lesser Shortwing. A Small Niltava, a White-tailed Robin and a Taiga Flycatcher added to our tally, before the lovely male Snowy-browed Flycatcher finally replaced the drab female to round off the day. All the action was packed into the last 30 minutes of fading light!

Black-headed and Black-crested bulbuls were the staple representatives of the bulbul clan here although the latter is widespread in the Himalayan foothills. A Blyth's Paradise-flycatcher made for an excellent photo op. A night trail to spot the producers of the widespread calls around us (Mountain Scops Owl, Asian Barred Owlet and the Brown Boobook) yielded only the Boobook: that too right over our campsite after an hour of stumbling around in the forest with our flashlights! Such are the vagaries of birding.

A final sit out at the hide by the puddles yielded a steady parade of the usual flycatcher suspects we had seen so far. A couple of uninvited commoners, a Gray-headed Canary Flycatcher and a Verditer Flycatcher gate crashed the party, but we could hardly shoo them away! The Cachar bulbul, a plain and rather unremarkable customer, finally gave us its darshan though it seemed to be a teetotaler, refusing to come down and drink (and thereby allow us its photo). A succession of props alternated with the main stars at the pool party: Black-crested bulbul, White-rumped Shama and Puff-throated Babbler. As the light faded, Dosdewa gave us the perfect parting gift: the aptly named, near tail-less Asian Stubtail with its huge supercilium furtively crept out of the undergrowth, drank quickly and ducked back out of sight, not once but twice! Sometimes birding is a transcendental experience: this afternoon at the hide was one such.

Dosdewa is strangely not classified as a reserve forest: unsurprisingly the village has crept its way into the forest and I found locals chopping trees and carrying logs out of the forest, a practice which will surely “kill the goose that lays the golden eggs”. Community conservation is the supposed norm in the Northeast and birding ecotourism will incentivize protection of the forest, but surely formal protection is needed to preserve this last patch of pristine forest in South Assam.

So don’t delay and plan a trip to Dosdewa before it's too late!