Friday, February 20, 2015, New Delhi

After a day of shamelessly lying in bed reading, we met up last evening with our tour group for dinner in one of the hotel’s restaurants. Our lead guide (from VENT, Victor Emanuel Nature Tours) is Dion Hobcroft, an Australian who sounds amazingly like our Sydney-born friend Neale. Dion is to be assisted by two Indian experts, Harish Kumar and Gajendra Singh. They have nine other guidees in addition to Lee and me: Jim and Pat, Charlie and Sally, Kaaren and Stephanie, Marie, and Amy and her son Zach. Jim and Pat have just been with Dion on a pre-tour trip to Kaziranga National Park in Assam, where they succeeded in seeing a tiger (and where it sounds as though Dion kept them going from dawn to dusk). The group seems very congenial and we are looking forward to traveling with them.

Harish Kumar, Dion Hobcroft, and Gajendra Singh (Click on images to enlarge)

The plan for today was to go birding in the morning and to spend the afternoon sight-seeing in Delhi. We were up at 6 and down for breakfast by 6:30 to be ready for the group’s departure by bus to visit Sultanpur National Park, about an hour’s drive away. On the trip, we learned that the bus drivers here have a separate glassed-in compartment at the head of the bus where they and their driver’s assistant sit. The assistant has chores like getting out and crossing many lanes of motorway traffic on foot to pay the necessary taxes when the bus enters a different state. Sultanpur is acacia woodland with an extensive wetland area, Sultanpur Jheel, and it was just overflowing with birds. We immediately started seeing Hoopoes and other wonderful birds, as well as the large antelope known as the Nilgai (which strikes me as looking like a sci-fi artist’s concept of a mammal-equivalent on an alien world).

Nilgai

Hoopoe (Image courtesy of Amy Sheldon)

We were still near the entrance when we had our first Spotted Owlet looking very sleepy and in the same tree a Brown-headed Barbet:

Spotted Owlet

Brown-headed Barbet (Image courtesy of Amy Sheldon)

We spent the rest of the morning wandering around the edges of the wetland glorying in the birds. Dion was eager to get the rarities for us all, such as this beautiful White-tailed Lapwing, but for Lee and me the very common Red-wattled Lapwing was also a lifebird:

White-tailed Lapwing

Red-wattled Lapwing (Image courtesy of Amy Sheldon)

Among the other rarities we encountered were a couple of Greater Flamingoes, but the most exciting birds were a small flock of Sind Sparrows. These are obviously close relatives of the world-wide House Sparrow, but very much rarer. They used to be endemic to the Indus Valley and have only recently spread this far south, having been able to move along the canals bringing water down from the rivers for the human residents here. They now breed in Sultanpur. They were fast-moving and hard to see, but Dion is really good at getting us on tiny, well-hidden birds and Stephanie got a beautiful shot:

Sind Sparrow (Image courtesy of Stephanie Velsmid)

It was a particularly good morning for kingfishers, though, alas, I can’t expect to get any new kingfishers on this trip. We enjoyed seeing this Pied Kingfisher hovering over the water, and we delighted in seeing many White-throated Kingfishers, including one flying along over the water in a fiery streak of turquoise. (Marie actually saw one of them drinking from our hotel’s swimming pool yesterday.) Pied Kingfisher (Image courtesy of Amy Sheldon)

White-throated Kingfisher (front and back) (Images courtesy of Amy Sheldon)

One of the stars of the morning was the Black-rumped Flameback, a large and very colorful woodpecker that we saw repeatedly. And we were delighted to find Indian Spot-billed Ducks, another new bird for us:

Black-rumped Flameback (Image courtesy of Amy Sheldon)

Indian Spot-billed Ducks (Image courtesy of Amy Sheldon)

When we arrived at the national park early in the morning, there were no clouds but the air was grey and not good for photography. Happily, by the end of the morning the air had cleared somewhat and we were getting better photos, such as Amy’s beautiful shots of a Rose-ringed Parakeet and of a now-awake Spotted Owlet:

Rose-ringed Parakeet (Image courtesy of Amy Sheldon)

Spotted Owlet (Image courtesy of Amy Sheldon)

(It felt right to be seeing Rose-ringed Parakeets in their native land, having had them squawking above us in London and Brussels and elsewhere around the world.) There were many other wonderful birds we didn’t succeed in photographing, especially the Coppersmith Barbet (which has a tinkling call very much like the sound of a coppersmith’s hammering), the Asian Openbill (a nifty stork), the Bar-headed Geese, a pair of Garganey, the perched Shikra (an elegant accipter), the Yellow-footed Green Pigeon, and the male Greater Coucal. Perhaps the loveliest bird of all was a male Black Redstart, its tail like orange fire.

While walking along the water’s edge, we discovered a tiny bat (an Indian Pipistrelle) whose wing was caught on the thorns of an acacia. It was struggling feebly and we could make out holes in its other wing, too. Dion, with help from some of the group, managed to free the poor little thing, which wasn’t easy, as it was out over the water and one doesn’t really want to touch bats because of the diseases they may carry. When Dion managed to get it free, the little bat fell into the water but immediately paddled a dozen strokes to get to shore and then hid itself in some vegetation to recover. We asked ourselves afterwards whether such intervention was justified, given that the bat would have made some other creature a nice meal, but we really could not leave it struggling so in the hot sun. The whole morning was a treat, though Lee and I were pretty pooped by the end. We had another long drive along crowded roads lined with throngs of people to return to the hotel for lunch. I gasped at the sight of a toddler toddling on the narrow sidewalk inches away from our bus’s tires. I find myself being distressed by the plastic litter everywhere. Dion has explained that traditionally one threw garbage out the window and some creature quickly consumed it, but now with modern food packaging, much of what gets thrown out is inedible (though we certainly saw many birds and other scavengers working through the piles). On the other hand, we keep passing markets full of the most beautiful fruits and vegetables, artistically arranged, and ever so much nicer than we see at home.

Neema

After lunch, we set out in the bus again with a local cultural guide, Neema, who did quite a good job of showing us the city in the short time she had to do it. I first began longing to take this tour about a decade ago when one of the birding magazines ran an article about it. Birds and trains and India! What more could one want? The article had a two-page spread of a photo of a bunch of birders with their binoculars to their faces looking up into a big tree—with the Taj Mahal behind them. It seemed like my sort of crowd. I couldn’t help wondering what Neema thought of us today, however, when we were suddenly transformed from being interested in what she was saying and respectful, only to be completely lost to her and the rest of the world because a big Alexandrine Parakeet was preening its tail in a tree above her. She was very patient with us.

Alexandrine Parakeet

Our main goal for the afternoon was to visit the Qutb Minar and its surrounding monuments, which are located in a big park that receives even more visitors annually than the Taj Mahal. It was a wonderful window into ancient India. The Qutb Minar is the world’s tallest brick minaret, almost 240 feet high. Its exterior is faced with red sandstone and marble carved with beautiful calligraphy. It was built to celebrate the victory of Mohammed Ghori, who came from Afghanistan and defeated the Rajputs in 1192, marking the beginning of Muslim rule in India (long before the Mughals).

Qutb Minar

Qutb Minar

The Minar is in very good condition but has had to be repaired a few times over the centuries. Due to a lightning strike, the upper two storeys were replaced late in the 14th Century by the then Sultan of Delhi, which explains why they are in white marble and of a different style. Further repairs were made at the start of the 16th Century following another lightning strike. Even the British got into the act when they added railings around the balconies for health and safety reasons. Then in 1828 when the cupola came down in an earthquake, an engineer named Robert Smith replaced it with an Anglo-Indian style construction that became known as Smith’s Folly because it was so anachronistic. It was finally removed twenty years later, as it really would not do, though it still sits in the gardens around the Minar.

Smith’s Folly

At the same time the Minar was built, India’s first mosque was built next to it. A Persian inscription on its facade states that stones taken from twenty-seven Hindu and Jain temples were used in its construction. One can see that the columns in the cloister, for example, differ from one another. The original carvings on the temple stones were left intact except that any human and animal figures were defaced.

Cloister of Quwwat ul-Islam Mosque

Behind the mosque are the ruins of a madrasa dating to the early 14th Century with perhaps the most beautiful carvings of all the buildings in the complex.	Alauddin Khilji’s Madrasa
Alauddin Khilji’s Madrasa	Alauddin Khilji’s Madrasa

Also in the Qutb complex is the base of another tower, the Alai Minar, that was to have been much bigger and taller than the Qutb Minar but never got to more than a few storeys of rubble fill before that king died in 1316 and the project was abandoned.

Alai Minar

The most ancient and remarkable artifact in the Qutb complex is one that could easily be overlooked among all the towering masonry, the 7-meter-tall Iron Pillar of Delhi:

Iron Pillar of Delhi

Detail of Capital

Damage from Cannon Ball

Much is not known about the Iron Pillar, and much is controversial. It is incontrovertibly ancient, likely dating to about 400 AD. The highly skilled ironworkers who made it added enough phosphorus to the iron to cause a corrosion-resistant crystalline layer to form on the surface, which is why the iron has failed to rust through all the monsoons of sixteen centuries. Where the pillar was made is not known, but it seems likely to have been moved to this place as a war trophy long after it was made. Who made it is also debated, though its most ancient inscription (which is in Sanskrit) may mean that it was made for King Chandragupta II, who reigned around 380-415 AD, during what is known as India’s Golden Age. The Iron Pillar has clearly been struck by a cannon ball fired from very nearby, which caused a crack to form on the side opposite the strike. This probably happened during the invasion of Delhi in 1739 by the Persian ruler Nadir Shah and may have been a case of iconoclasm, due to religious discomfort with having a Hindu monument next to a mosque. There is speculation that only one shot was fired because fragments of the cannon ball ricocheted and damaged the mosque. (That corner of the mosque is known to have been damaged in that era.) The Iron Pillar has had a little fence around it for some years now to stop people from hugging it and wearing away the protective patina.

Inscription on Iron Pillar (Image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons)

Despite the crowds all around us, we found wildlife in the Qutb complex, of course. A Brown Rock-Chat seemed to consider the ruined stone buildings a natural habitat, and the flowerbeds had Jungle Babblers:

Brown Rock-Chat

Jungle Babbler (Image courtesy of Amy Sheldon)

We found the funniest bird of the day in the gardens below the Qutb Minar, an immature male Purple Sunbird just beginning to get its breeding plumage, its feathers still in their pins—remarkably scruffy looking:

Molting Purple Sunbird (Image courtesy of Amy Sheldon)

What It Should Look Like (Image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons)

Five-striped Palm Squirrels were everywhere, running up and down the carved faces of the buildings and climbing the trees. Lee continued his quest to get the perfect photograph of one of them but he keeps missing the tip of the tail:

Five-striped Palm Squirrel

Upon leaving the Qutb complex, we turned our attention from the Ghurid Empire to the British Empire, which also built extensively in Delhi, mostly to the designs of Sir Edwin Lutyens. Lutyens’ Delhi reminded me in some ways of other planned capitals, such as Canberra and DC, in that it made rather profligate use of land and everything seems too far apart, though one enjoys having so much greenspace. We passed first through the Lutyens Bungalow Zone, which contains about a thousand handsome, low, white houses set in large, lush gardens. One’s impression is of white and dark green and complete isolation from the realities of Delhi. The ten percent of these houses that are still in private hands (most belong to the Indian government) are said to be the most expensive residential real estate in the world. We drove on to see the Parliament and other government buildings, most of which were inherited from the Raj. (The Viceroy’s Palace is now the Rashtrapati Bhawan, the President’s House, etc.) Lee managed, from the moving bus, to capture a photo along the Rajpath (“King’s Way”) of the canopy which once held a 50-foot sculpture of King George V in front of the India Gate (the memorial to the soldiers of India who died in vast numbers in World War I) in front of the Rashtrapati Bhawan. As we drove along, we laughed at the sight of two beautiful little Stilts, not ordinarily city birds, cavorting in the Parliamentary fountain.

View Along the Rajpath

Parliamentary Fountain with Stilts

We got out to walk around in a park in the government area for a few minutes, where we encountered another new bird, Asian Pied Starling. The gardens were lovely with flowers and it was pleasant to be out of the frantic traffic for a while. Neema explained that the somewhat excessive number of traffic rotaries in New Delhi is another legacy from the British. Getting back to our hotel in the Friday evening rush-hour traffic was an effort.

Asian Pied Starling (Image courtesy of Amy Sheldon)

Lee and I had just time enough to upload our photos and start a networked backup going before joining the others for dinner in the hotel. Before beginning to eat, the group went through the evening ritual of checking our checklists for the birds we had seen during the day. I had missed several that the others had seen, but here was my list for the day (lifebirds in bold face):

There aren’t many days in my life when I see thirty lifers! The two barbets are a new family for us, the Asian Barbets. The Common Woodshrike may be a new family, or it may be just another Vanga. (With all the discoveries being made as the result of DNA sequencing, the taxonomy of birds is very much in flux.) Himantopus himantopus (Image courtesy of Amy Sheldon) While we were doing the checklist, one of our companions pointed out that during the day we’d seen three species whose genus and species names are identical, Anser anser (Greylag Goose), Porphyrio porphyrio (Purple Swamphen), and Himantopus himantopus (Black-winged Stilt). She added that she has a friend who keeps a list of such birds. This became a sort of brain worm for me, and I worked out that while we were in England last week, Lee and I got three others, Buteo buteo (Common Buzzard), Pica pica (Eurasian Magpie), and Vanellus vanellus (Northern Lapwing). Our dear friend Laurie later solved the question for me of what such names are named, which is tautonyms. I am resolved not to let this concept invade my mind. Anser anser (Image courtesy of Amy Sheldon) When we got back to our room, Lee showed me that he had acquired our souvenir rock for the trip, a small piece of the handsome yellow sandstone that is used so widely here. We leave Delhi in the morning to fly to Jodhpur.