The picture above is of a White-Cheeked Barbet. As you can see it is in a funny position, the barbet was calling while I took this picture, it stopped, rather confused for a second. but it soon started croaking away again.
Here on the other hand is my Doggo, Licorice. :CUTENESS WARNING BTW:
And finally we have my Cat, Toffy. He poses for pictures like a king. (he probably is already a king)
Vultures are fascinating birds. They are scavengers, meaning they feed on dead animals. Sadly, Vulture population in India decreased by a drastic “90+ percent”. The reason behind this is solely because of one thing, Diclofenac.
Diclofenac is an anti-inflammatory drug used by farmers to treat sick cattle, the drug itself is harmless on the cattle, but is deadly to the Vultures. The scavengers fed on dead cattle treated with Diclofenac which resulted in their kidney failure and visceral gout in those Vultures leading to their death. This was the fastest decline of a single bird population anywhere in the world, and it took only fifteen years.
But there is good news now. The drug is banned in India, Nepal and Pakistan. The specific species of vultures that were affected the most were the Indian Vulture, Slender-Billed Vulture, and The White Rumped Vulture.
No one would have thought that these birds would have such an important role in our daily life. With no Vultures to feed on the carcases, the carcases rot, soon attracting pests like rats, which then cause diseases in the nearby villages. Every animal has a role in the ecosystem, and here are the Vultures playing an important part in it.
NOTE: Pictures below from wikipedia.
There are many things that can be observed while watching birds. Some things which we, or others, may not have known at all. These intricate observations help a lot if you are a beginner birder, but they play a much more important role even for advanced birding. Take a Koel, for instance. My father told me that when he was small there was a song that people sang to their children. “The Crow is Black, The Drongo is Black, And the Koel is Black.” But when my grandparents were visiting, my dad showed them a photo of a female Koel. But they didn’t recognize it. since they thought a Koel is only black. This observation isn’t really helpful in terms of working in the field, but I just wanted to share it for fun. Other observations like seasonal changes can confuse birders with a different colored plumage or other changes. A recent example of this is when I and my dad started noticing that our resident, “Green Bee-Eaters” didn’t have their “elongated tail” as per usual. We checked online and found out that the breeding season for the bee-eaters is March to June, and we were right in the middle of march. The juvenile bee-eaters didn’t have the elongated tails, so all the ones we saw were juveniles. Use the internet as a tool for any doubts or questions you have about your birding experience, make sure you use trusted sources. I suggest the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, but there are other sites you can use. Thank you for reading 🙂
Not long ago, I saw a new, unidentified bird. The problem was that I didn’t have my camera, it was back in the boys’ cabin. I figured if I ran fast enough I could get the camera before the bird flew away. Although it was risky, I ran to the cabin to get the camera. While I was running back, I hoped it would still be there. But in the back of my mind, I had the feeling that it would have flown away. I slowed down as I got closer. To my surprise, the bird was sitting in the same spot facing the same way. I took a few photos until it perched under a tree. Fortunately for me, the bird had sat even closer. This was enough time for me to get a few decent photos of this “mystery bird” the identification features of this bird pointed to being a cuckoo. But there was one thing that confused me. The bird was rufous (red) colored. About 7 hours later, I came back from my trip and was at home. The first thing I did was show my Dad a new woodpecker (lesser golden-backed or black-rumped flameback) I had seen, we started going through the photos I had taken and viewed them on a bigger screen. Soon we came to the unidentified bird.
After some digging, we found out that some cuckoos have a hepatic form (hepatic meaning liver, basically meaning liver colored). One of the species that had a hepatic form was the lesser cuckoo, it looked very similar to our bird. There was one problem with this, however. It wasn’t found where I was. We did some more research to see whether anyone else had seen a lesser cuckoo in our area, but nothing came up. I looked at my field guide and browsed through some more cuckoos and stumbled across the grey-bellied cuckoo. It was found all over India and the females have a hepatic stage that looks ditto to our bird!
After some clarification, we came to the conclusion that this in-fact is a grey-bellied cuckoo! welcome to the collection!
Rahul's Birding and Nature Blog 