Two weeks back we had gone cycling to Big Banyan tree off Mysore Road. We happened to site a beautiful colony of weaver birds just off the road on a thorny tree. We were quite excited and decided we shall come back next week with binocs and camera.

We kept the promise we had made ourselves and went birding around big banyan tree. Its the breeding season for Weaver birds. So we were glad to watch the Baya Weaver in bright yellow breeding plumage. Lot of nests in the tree were still being build. There were some complete (may be old?) and others half done.

Close to the same place we found 2-3 floks of munias. Each one with 10-15 members. And there were different kinds of munias in the same flock like Black headed munia, scaly breasted munia, red munia (Avadavt)

Scaly Breasted Munia

We also Indian Silverbill which is munia family but they were in a flock of there own happily picking food from fields around

Indian Silverbill

In a nearby water hole the king showed its excellent skill at fishing (Pied Kingfisher). It would be still in air at one point and study the water and suddenly dive for the catch.

Pied Kingfisher

After this we continued towards Manchanbele Dam and watched Sunbirds. There was a huge flock of them

Purple Rumped Sunbird (Male)

To our surprise we saw the beautiful coppersimth barbet perching on a near by tee and it did not make any call. Usually it always use to be other way round, we would hear it but not see it

Coppersmith Barbet

Streaked Laughingthrush

Its been a long long time since I posted on LJ. We visited Kinnaur, HP from May 22 to Jun 6. Places we visited are Kalpa, Lambar, Charang, Chitkul, Sangla, Sarahan, Narkanda, Thanedar, and Kothgarh.

This turned out to be an amazing trip in terms of birding. Almost every other bird we saw was a new one for me. Orange seemed to be most popular colour among the birdies. Majority of birds had at least some bit of rufous/orange in them. One surprising thing was that we didn't see much raptors, spotted Himalayan Griffon 2 times and that is all in whole trip. Also we didn't visit any lakes so didn't see much water birds.

Himalayan Bulbul

Some of the highlights of the trip are the Yellow Billed Blue Magpies we spotted all the time when we were in Sarahan. And the tits, small little beauties that are in so many variety in the Himalayas. And ofcourse the Bulbul is again the most spotted bird. But this was Himalayn Bulbul that I had not seen earlier, looks exactly like the red vented Bulbul, except for a yellow vent. May be slightly bigger. Another surprising thing we saw was that the crow seemed to be harassed by the smaller birds!! once we saw a drango chase a crow away and other instance we saw a shrike chasing away crow. Other abundant ones were sparrows and their cousins like russet sparrow, buntings, and whole lot we couldn't ID.

Bags on display at a road side stall in Manali. Manali has a small but interesting bazaar. Came across lots of small goodies. Fireworks made into balls(with innovative name: kuch kuch hota hai), decorative knifes... And as usual lots of restaurants and apparel shops.