Coimbatore Bird Race – 2020
The Taiga flycatcher is a winter migrant to India. The natural habitat for this flycatcher is Taiga forest (snow forest) and seeing this little one made our bird race more interesting.
Bird race is a familiar term among birders while non-birders may think it as a race among birds like horse race. Bird race which is otherwise called as “Big Day” is a birding event where a single person or a team of birding enthusiasts tries to see as many species of birds as possible in a single day. It is an event that is getting quite popular among urban birders. Recently urban people in India started showing interests in outdoor activities like Marathons, Cycling, Trekking , Birding etc. All these recreations act as stress busters for the city people who often work long hours.
While for many, birding starts as a hobby, it is in such events that one becomes to understand whether this hobby can turn into a passion. Doing casual birding in the morning for couple of hours is a relaxing experience indeed but when you do it through the day , even during the hot sun, it tests your inclination towards the activity.
Women Birders in Coimbatore, Tamilnadu
The team was constantly searching for birds and in this place we were searching for the elusive Blue-faced Malkoha.
Vinod and myself often do both. We saunter one day but on another literally burn our eyes by going early morning and returning late night without a break. I should say I rather enjoy casual birding and remember the moments. I also love to remember locations where we saw a bird species first time. For example, we saw one of the uncommon birds in India the Spectacled Finch in Shangarh, Himachal Pradesh while going for a grocery purchase. So more often than not we are not the people who wants the highest count of birds in a day but memories with each bird we see. This obviously puts us in the opposite end of the spectrum of a bird race but this year I decided to do the bird race because of my female friends I met in CNS (Coimbatore Nature Society). It turned out that we can get burned out and also have very pleasant memories at the same time.
Our 4 member women team did birding from dawn to dusk without rest. The “Minivets” team really rocked!!
When Jeyanti Rajan suggested me about joining the Bird Race in Coimbatore by SACON , I thought there won’t be enough members for us to form a team and soon we will drop the idea. It turned out I was wrong big time. Before we knew better we had enough members to form two teams. We named our group as “Minivets” and it was lead by Mrs. R. Saraswathi a retired botany professor. Other team members were myself , Mrs. Laya Sriraam a Doctor and Mrs. Jeyanti Rajan an artist. We had long discussions about routes as we wanted to see dense forest , shrub land and water bodies in a single day to see different bird species. After numerous calls and whatsapp messages we finalized with this route – Nilgiri Biosphere Nature Park -> SACON trail -> Narasampathi-> Kolarampathi-> Selva Sinthamani Lakes.
Our route plan for the bird race which started from Nilgiri Biosphere Nature Park and ended at Water bodies inside Coimbatore City.
In the past ten years I had done hundreds of birding trips but this one seemed very different to me. Few of the reasons may be , this was the first birding trip for me without Vinod , this was the first birding trip with just ladies and this was the first trip I was going to concentrate only on birds (I easily deviate from birds to butterflies to wildflowers or just sitting and watching the clouds). So there were many FIRSTS for me in this bird race and I started feeling like going for an exam on the day of the race. My fellow team members also took the bird race very seriously and took extraordinary efforts to attend the bird race after making all arrangements for their kids at home. These Super Moms did “homework” and learnt many new details about birds for this bird race. Everyone had their last minute struggles but still all made it to our meeting point sharply at 5.30 AM and started off to our first birding location.
The Jerdon’s Leaf bird is a bright green colored bird but camouflages well with the green leaves. We spotted both Golden-fronted and Jerdon’s leaf bird during the course of the day.
Laya was our driver who kept an eye on the road and even more keen eye on the birds. It looked like she got an extra pair of eyes as she started spotting birds like Leaf bird, Honey Buzzard just like that. Our senior member Mrs. Saraswathi was so patient on us while we were just screaming at every bird we saw. When we saw a new bird she dutifully noted down the place, time and id of the bird species. Jeyanti was carefully keeping a count on the bird species and kept a sharp eye on birds. As we were 4 over eager birders, we ended up making too many stops at Anaikatti road before even reaching Nilgiri biosphere nature park. When we decided the next stop was only at Nilgiri Biosphere Nature Park, a beautiful fig tree with full ripened fruits came into our view. No birder can skip a fruiting fig tree, so we all stopped at the fig tree and we were not disappointed. A flock of Indian Grey Hornbills just flew above our heads and landed on the fig tree. We were so happy to spot Chestnut-tailed Starlings,Coppersmith Barbets and few other birds in that tree.
The Indian Grey Hornbills were pecking the fig bruits and playfully jumped on the neighboring trees. This one landed on a tamarind tree and was watching his other mates.
After the fig tree, without any further stops we reached Nilgiri Biosphere Nature Park. It was a bit silent inside the park because of the gloomy weather but we managed to spot Taiga flycatcher, Tickell’s blue flycatcher, Puff-throated babbler, Forest wagtail and many other birds. We decided to have breakfast in the park and then move on to SACON. All four of us are master planners, so we had brought food for the entire day just to avoid wasting time at any hotel. We had yummy podi-idlies and sandwiches prepared by Laya and Jeyanti while watching the Asian brown flycatcher which was catching its breakfast.
Breakfast and Lunch were simple but delicious homemade foods. In addition to these foods, Saraswathi madam and Jeyanti fed us with healthy snacks whenever someone felt tired. Laya also brought some sundal for evening snacks.
We then proceeded to SACON and by the time we reached SACON it was hot. We saw Tawny-bellied babbler, Yellow-crowned woodpecker, Small minivet and few other birds in SACON. It was too hot for us to spot any birds then and we decided to venture out to waterbodies. When we started our return , Laya suddenly got an idea to visit Anuvavi temple. We all agreed to that and took the turn for Anuvavi temple. On the way we heard the loud sound of Large grey babblers and stopped to see a flock of them sitting on a tree. Seeing the huge number of parked vehicles outside the temple , we decided to turn back but then Laya wanted to try for the Yellow-throated bulbul which was regularly seen in this temple. So me and Laya teamed up to go to the temple while Saraswathi madam and Jeyanthi went to explore birds near Nandavanam temple.
Anuvavi Subramani Temple is not usually crowded and located amidst forest. So it is an excellent place to see birds and butterflies.
We were not lucky to see the Yellow-throated bulbul as the temple was very crowded with the Thaipoosam festival. By the time we got down from the temple, all four of us were hungry and searched for a place to have our lunch. We took a dirt road nearby and we stopped at a place with a panaromic view of the surroundings. We all enjoyed the lemon rice prepared by me and Curd rice by Saraswathi madam but constantly kept eyes on birds. Suddenly Jeyanti got so excited and showed me a raptor flying past closely. We quickly put down our plates and took binoculars to our eyes. We shouted excitedly “Kestrel” and had a good look at the beautiful raptor. After spending some more time in this terrain, we decided to move to the water bodies.
We never thought we will enjoy our delicious lunch in this beautiful foothill, that too watching this cute Kestrel.
As the goal was to have good number of bird count, we were very excited to see the common birds like Hoopoe, House Sparrow and Rock pigeon who crossed our path. On the way to Krishnampathi lake, we saw many common urban birds.
The lakes in Coimbatore were quite full this time of the year , thanks to the good rains in 2019. This meant that less number of waders could be seen as they need shallow water level. So we constantly searched for mud banks , water puddles and finally we spotted a flock of waders but they were very far to get an id of the birds. I took some photos and zoomed in to find them as Little Stints , Common Ringed Plovers and few Sandpipers. The Sun was going down and by the time we reached Ukkadam, we only saw silhouettes of birds.
Like I said earlier, I get distracted quite easily by wildflowers. So even I know Water Hyacinth is a horrible weed and destroying the habitats of water birds, I couldn’t take my eyes off its beauty that glowed in the evening light in Ukkadam Lake.
Still we couldn’t stop seeing birds and even while waiting in a traffic signal, we were seeing a Shikra who was sitting on a lamp post.
It was dark now and we finished our bird race with bird count 111 and rushed to Hotel Fairfield Marriott where the meeting and dinner was arranged. We quickly filled our checklist and listened to senior members, experts talk about the event. Even though everyone was tired with the full day birding, all were very excited to share the same room with the like-minded people.
Saraswathi Madam shared her bird race experience with other bird race teams and expressed her happiness. She was fully energetic from dawn to dusk which motivated us to push our limits.
We all excitedly shared each team’s bird race stories while eating delicious dinner. After sharing few stories it was time to end a hectic but memorable day.
In an era where the mainstream media stereotypes happiness as shopping mall ,restaurants and movies ( particularly for women), we had done the opposite. We roamed around trees, spotted beautiful birds and had our food in the middle of no where. All this is not quite the happiness that the TV prescribes us but we were the happiest by the end of the day.