During the spring of last year, a world birding friend of mine (Ashley Howe) was putting a trip together to see a whole host of either range restricted or globally threatened species in the north and north west of India, with one of my biggest targets being the Great Indian Bustard, and with only an estimated 120 Bustards left on the planet, it didn’t take me too long (a few minutes) to join this trip, that was run by Asian Adventures. The company used were excellent being very well organised, adaptable to changes if requested and very nice guides who knew their stuff, both birds and all important info in this chaotic country.
India is a country that I had yet to visit. However having birded Sri Lanka and Northern Thailand extensively, and a short visit to the UAE, the list of new birds wouldn’t be as great as one would think for visiting what is described as a sub-continent, and in all I personally recorded a fraction under 300 species, and conjured up 69 new species, of which a fare majority are in serious decline and in danger of extinction during this century.
Over this 15 day trip, we (Ashley Howe, Dan & Mike Booker, Josh Jones and Chris Straw) travelled from New Delhi, the western limits of Uttar Pradesh, Rajasthan, Gujarat (including both The Great & Little Rann of Kutch) and ended in Mumbai. This included only one internal flight and one extremely competent driver who had driven us a few thousand miles in a relatively short space of time.
Sadly for 90% of the days I either had the tap running, was being sick or suffering from a minor cold. Thankfully neither of these meant I was stuck indoors recovering and was lucky that I managed see everything I wanted to, and not hold the group up in any way.
In all, it was a great trip with pretty much all targets seen, but it’ll be a while before I return to India. The people, traffic and surprisingly the food has put me off but no doubt I’ll be back as there are many mouth watering species to see in both the south and the north east regions.
There will be a series of blog posts after this one.
India is a country that I had yet to visit. However having birded Sri Lanka and Northern Thailand extensively, and a short visit to the UAE, the list of new birds wouldn’t be as great as one would think for visiting what is described as a sub-continent, and in all I personally recorded a fraction under 300 species, and conjured up 69 new species, of which a fare majority are in serious decline and in danger of extinction during this century.
Over this 15 day trip, we (Ashley Howe, Dan & Mike Booker, Josh Jones and Chris Straw) travelled from New Delhi, the western limits of Uttar Pradesh, Rajasthan, Gujarat (including both The Great & Little Rann of Kutch) and ended in Mumbai. This included only one internal flight and one extremely competent driver who had driven us a few thousand miles in a relatively short space of time.
Sadly for 90% of the days I either had the tap running, was being sick or suffering from a minor cold. Thankfully neither of these meant I was stuck indoors recovering and was lucky that I managed see everything I wanted to, and not hold the group up in any way.
In all, it was a great trip with pretty much all targets seen, but it’ll be a while before I return to India. The people, traffic and surprisingly the food has put me off but no doubt I’ll be back as there are many mouth watering species to see in both the south and the north east regions.
There will be a series of blog posts after this one.
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Great Indian Bustard in Rajasthan
With an estimated population of
just over 100 individuals, this certainly
qualifies as one of the world's rarest birds.
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Indian Spotted Creeper in Rajasthan
One of the trickiest species to find on our
target list, where preferred habitat is sparse, and
habitat that holds very few birds.
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Forest Owlet near Mumbai
Only re-discovered in 1997.
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| Jungle Cat in Great Rann of Kutch |
