Favourite bird of Nilgiris

It was a long time, I was waiting for a trip to Ooty for birding, after seeing the great images of birds made by my co-clickers. Ooty is an area of colourful birds, and almost all the birds are among the charismatic class, in other words, most celebrated by bird photographers.

So, I planned a trip to Ooty in the beginning of March, for a sat/sun. The summer vacation crowd was just starting. The main two areas to cover were - Botanical garden and Doddabetta, as per an expert's advise.

First place I visited was the Botanical garden. I was invited by few Oriental White-eyes which had just started their day, collecting honey from the Bottle Brush flowers. Soon after that, I could see the Nilgiri Flycatcher - the 2nd most popular bird locally. 
After a while walking, I could only see couple of Indian Pond herons, Sparrows and Red-whiskered Bulbuls. I was told, the Kashmiri Flycatcher has not visited Ooty this year. Then after sometime, I saw the most popular bird of Ooty - Black and Orange Flycatcher. I fell in love with the bird, the first time I saw it. It was a curious little bird, with black and orange colours in its plumage as its name say.

In Ooty, I could feel that the birds are very much used to humans and are not as shy as the birds I have seen in western ghats. In the botanical garden, I saw Black and Orange Flycatcher, Nilgiri Flycatcher, Grey headed Canary Flycatcher, Bar-winged Flycatcher Shrike, Plenty of Indian Black Birds collecting nesting materials, Red-whiskered Bulbuls, Great tits, Common Moorhen, Indian Pond Herons, Spotted Dove and lots & lots of House Sparrows. 

Then I started to Doddabetta after a quick lunch. It was around 7Km from Ooty town, and another 3 Km was reached via a four-by-four jeep drive. In Doddabetta, I found the Nilgiri Laughing Thrush, White-bellied Shortwing and Common Rosefinsh. Also I saw the Nilgiri Wood Pigeon and a Black eagle. The birds here are adapted to feed on the throw-away of fruits from the vendors.  

Out of all the birds I saw in Ooty, I liked the Black and Orange Flycatcher the most. The curious little bird is so cute to watch. The way they behave after seeing a person in its territory, the way it calls with its bright orange tail spread to show the territorial display, everything was beautiful about this bird. I saw 2 pairs of them, and a single male, in both botanical garden and at Doddabetta. 

Black-and-rufous flycatcher (Ficedula nigrorufa):

The main population of this bird is found in the high elevation plateaus (above 1500m) areas of the Nilgiris, Palani Hills, Biligirirangans (Bellaji and Honnametti) and Kannan Devan Hills. They prefer areas with high leaf litter and undergrowth in open shola grassland habitats. 

In the breeding season, March to May, these birds are very vocal. They feed on insects by flycatching low over the ground and also pick insects from the ground. Territories are maintained by a pair throughout the year. The threat display involves the male pointing bill up, fanning the tail, opening wings and producing "keet-keet" notes. Males are usually involved in defense but females may sometimes join in. The nest is built by the female, placed in a low bush or fern. Two greyish speckled eggs form the usual clutch. Young birds are brownish and speckled. The nest is unlike that of most flycatchers and is large, coarse, ball-like and made from sedges. The nest has a foundation of dry leaves and ferns. The nest has an external diameter of about 6 inches (15 cm) and the egg cavity which is devoid of any lining is about 2 inches (5.1 cm) in diameter and 2 inches (5.1 cm) deep. The nest is placed usually at the centre of a bush at about 1 to 3 feet (0.30 to 0.91 m) height with an entrance hole close to the top.

The peak feeding activity of the birds is early in the morning and towards dusk. During these period they capture as many as 100 insects an hour whereas at mid-day they are half as efficient.

Refer: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black-and-orange_Flycatcher

Other birds of Ooty...

Nilgiri Flycatcher (male)

Grey headed Canary flycatcher

Bar winged Flycatcher Shrike

White bellied Shortwing | Nilgiri Blue Robin

Nilgiri Laughing Thrush

Great Tit

Common Rosefinch (male)

Oriental White Eye

Overall, it was a great trip to Nilgiris, and I still remember the call and jumping of the cute little Black and Orange flycatcher. 

A Defensive Posture

It was monsoon... June end, 2013. We were in Coorg for macro photography. During a morning walk, we saw a really huge caterpillar munching a leaf. It was almost 12 Cm in length. We spent sometime there observing the beautiful green creature finishing off all the leaves in the branch, in a speed beyond we could imagine. It was an eating machine.

It was green in colour, with "S" shaped blue and yellow stripes in the body. It had a prickly horn like single projection in its tail.

By mistake, one of us touched the plant, and the caterpillar got to know that it is being watched. 
Suddenly it changed it's posture. The head freed from the munching leaf, facing upwards and folding all its tiny legs towards its face, as if like praying.

It was looking cute, but I couldn't interpret the meaning then. I thought, it is trying to convey to us, "go away".

Later, when identifying the caterpillar, I understood that it is a Death's-head Hawkmoth's (Acherontia lachesis) caterpillar.

Death's-head Hawkmoth got its name because, this massive hawk moth has the spooky image of a skull on its thorax, and its horizontally banded body reminds us of the ribs of a human skeleton. Add to this fact that the death's head hawk moth can squeak when alarmed and that its huge caterpillar can make clicking sounds.

This is a defensive/camouflage posture to make the caterpillar looks less like food to hungry predators. When disturbed, late instar hawkmoth caterpillars puts them in a good position to employ another defensive response: clicking and puking sometimes. 

The Defensive Posture

  

Eating machine

For more details, refer: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acherontia_lachesis

Tiger luck

Mid-May of last year, we visited Tadoba for Tigers… Lot of funny things happened throughout the trip… Some of them are shared here…  

The first safari… we started as the last jeep to the park, and the Naturalist we got was not talking at all. To start a conversation and get comfortable with him, I asked "What birds do you get here?". Then I noticed that his mouth was full of pan, overflowing, which might be the reason he was quite. Still he bothered to answer - "You don't get birds here. Only tigers". I thought, "WoW! what a naturalist we have got". 

During the safaris, he asks for the tiger activities from other jeeps or village people or forest guards he meet on the way, and nods his head for whatever they say. But shockingly, he never goes to those places where they said there could be tigers. We couldn't understand his strategy. At one point, we thought he is scared of tigers. He never stops at a place to observe the activities, unless there is something he finds like Guars or Barking deer. He will be the first one to get out of the forest, at least 10-15 minutes than others. 

On a morning safari, we drove the jeep through some places, and found a tiger cub (one of Teliya female cub) somewhere far-away inside the bush. Though we were not able to photograph, we were ready to wait for it to come out. But our naturalist was not ready, and we started from that place. As usual, he didn't stop anywhere else, but just roamed around the forest, though there were 3 jeeps waiting for a tiger to come out, near a lake. He said, its time to leave and we almost reached the exit gate. All of us in the jeep were irritated and cursing our 'tiger-luck'. Forget about tigers, he is not even stopping for any birds. 

When we were just few meters away from exit gate, for all our surprise, we saw a huge male tiger resting in the shade. We were crossing a small 2 feet wide bridge that was over a tunnel. We stopped the jeep there and started clicking. All of a sudden, a female tiger came out from under the bridge. It was almost at a touching distance from the jeep. They were the mating couple the one we missed the previous day, and they were mating for the past 2 days, very close to an agriculture land. The male was called 'Leopard face' and the female was called 'P2 female'. All tigers are named and have their own star value here in Tadoba.

Then the tiger pair started doing some courtship rituals, right in front of us. I could manage to get the photos of some of the sequence. Later they vanished inside the bushes.  

The Groom

The Bride

Following her...

Face-to-face

Courtship rituals

Tigers' Courtship

Tigers don’t have a set season for reproduction to take place. Instead they are able to engage in the activities throughout the year. However, most of the time it will occur from late November through early April. Males are ready to mate when they are approximately 5 years of age. For females it is about 3 ½ years of age.

During the courting process you may hear tigers making a variety of howls and whines for each other. The males usually start this off but the females are very likely to respond. When they do come into contact with each other a dance of smelling each other, purring, and even rubbing against each other is very common. Some couples will go as far as to lick and to groom each other as well.

When a male and a female decide they would like to mate with each other, they will engage in the act several times over the course of a couple of days. That is how long the female will remain in heat at any given period of time. It is common for a male to mate with several different females as long as he is healthy and his basic needs are being met.

It was a wonderful experience to watch the Tiger pair, at an unexpected moment, when we were exiting the park. We might have missed the pair if we had waited at the park for some more time. That's nature - we never know what happens at what place. During my recent birding trip, an expert told me - "It is nature. No predictions or expectations. We should enjoy what it gives".