Saturday, March 7, 2015, Kanha National Park, Madhya Pradesh, India

This was our last day at Kanha National Park
(Image courtesy of VENT)
(Click on images to enlarge)

We were again first in line for entry into the park and spent half an hour watching the moon set and the sun rise. The tree above us gradually filled with birds, including Greater Racket-Tailed Drongos, Rufous Treepies, and Brown-headed Barbets. Finally the park opened, our local guide for the day, Kamal, hopped in, and we headed off to look for the tigers. Nobody found any all day. (My theory is that the tigers took advantage of the one-day closure to relocate so that the humans couldn’t bother them for a while.) However, our group was very mellow about whether we saw a tiger or not, having had such a lovely look two days ago.

Dawn at the gate to Kanha National Park

What we did get was some really splendid birds. In the early morning light, a pair of Indian Scops Owls cuddled at the entrance to their nest hole. And a Crested Serpent-Eagle sat sunning itself in the wan sunshine, its white wing linings deployed to catch some rays.

Indian Scops Owls sleeping, Kanha National Park

Crested Serpent-Eagle sunning, Kanha National Park

I was able to get a good look at a Woolly-necked Stork at last. One of the best birds of the morning was the Velvet-fronted Nuthatch. Who could have imagined that a nuthatch could be blue?

Woolly-necked Stork (Image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons)

Velvet-fronted Nuthatch (Image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons)

We stopped for breakfast in a park compound different from the one we used two days ago, built in an area with enormous Banyan trees. The Hanuman Langurs were waiting for breakfast, too.

Banyan Tree, Kanha National Park

Hanuman Langur waiting, Kanha National Park

A cloth was spread on the jeep’s hood and the food laid out on it. The potato samosas were wonderful. Lee and I carried our plates to a low wall nearby, which was foolish of us. Gajendra yelled just in time for us to notice the two langurs sneaking along the other side of the wall to grab our plates. We snatched the plates up barely in time. I do believe Gajendra threw a small stone at the monkeys. One of them then snuck into a nearby jeep and grabbed a foil-wrapped sandwich, which the man sitting there couldn’t prevent because he was protecting his baby. The culprit ran away and sat atop the wall. It was clear that removing aluminum foil from a sandwich was something he’d learned at his mother’s knee. Watching the culprit, Kaaren shook her head disapprovingly, “White bread—very unhealthy.” Gajendra shared some of our excess food with the man and his wife.

Culprit, Kanha National Park

We continued through the park exploring new sections and finding new birds (but no tigers). Many of the passengers in other jeeps our driver stopped to consult with looked rather disgruntled, but we were all delighted with our morning as we kept seeing more and more wonderful birds. We found a pair of Common Kingfishers outside their nest in a muddy bank looking just gorgeous. They complained loudly of our presence, however, so we soon left them in peace. A pair of Crested Treeswifts, one of my most-wanted birds, perched in the open high above us, too high up for us to see their crests, alas. Treeswifts differ from the closely-related true swifts in that the treeswifts can perch on a branch, an ability the true swifts have lost. I have long considered the Moustached Treeswift (which we saw in Papua New Guinea) to be the most beautiful bird I’ve ever seen—not so much a bird as the idea of a bird.

Crested Treeswift (Image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons)

Moustached Treeswift on nest (Image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons)

A pair of Scarlet Minivets dazzled us as they flew about, ever so much prettier than I had expected from the book. A wonderful pair of Rufous Woodpeckers gave us a good look.

Male Scarlet Minivet (Image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons)

Rufous Woodpecker (Image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons)

One of the highlights of the morning was twice seeing a Red Junglefowl (Gallus gallus, the progenitor of chickens) crossing the road and then to hear one of them giving his alarm call in the woods. (This was not a lifebird for us, as some of the “wild chickens” on Kaua‘i, introduced by the Polynesians, are considered to be genetically Red Junglefowl and thus “countable”. Their chicks, for example, are striped rather than yellow. I have a fond memory of Lee’s dear father Charles, who loved chickens all his life, being enchanted by the prospect of seeing Red Junglefowl when we took him to Kaua‘i to celebrate his 90th birthday: “I’ve seen them on Channel 13, but I never expected to see them in real life!”) When we finally had to leave the park, we made our way from the main road to the lodge and were stopped ten times along the way by merry children demanding Holi money. It was all very good natured, and it was a treat to see the grins on their faces when they got their way, at which point they had to scurry to remove the strings, saplings, and rocks blocking the road to let us through (but not let through any car behind us). Lee and I joined the others for lunch before the open doors through which they had the great bird show yesterday. Not much happened except that Plum-headed Parakeets landed atop a nearby tree twice while I wasn’t looking. The meal was again excellent. We’ve all agreed that this hotel has the best food of any on our trip.

Male Red Junglefowl (Image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons)

Lesser Adjutant

I decided to go out for the afternoon drive knowing that it was likely to be another tiger snark hunt. Lee’s back wouldn’t permit him to go (and mine was right at the edge of handling all that bumping). For the first time, our jeep wasn’t the first in line for the opening of the park (though it was second); this is because we encountered the same ten barricades and had to convince the skeptical children that we’d already paid. Gajendra told us that we weren’t going to stop for any birds we’d already seen, only for important things like a Lesser Adjutant (a stork) or a Stork-billed Kingfisher, as we were going to try to get another tiger. Fortunately, a minute later, we did see (and stop for) a Lesser Adjutant, which was another of my most-wanted birds. We spent the rest of the afternoon in pursuit of a tiger. We stayed a long while beside a woodland in which Spotted Deer were giving their alarm call, but no line of sight we tried revealed the tiger causing their alarm. (Lee and I have watched so many videos about tigers that I instantly recognized that alarm call. You can hear it in this video.) We later noticed a tiger’s pug mark in the road overlaying a recent tire track. When we returned to the place where the Spotted Deer had been calling, we heard Barking Deer giving their alarm call, which sounds remarkably like large dogs barking. (You can hear it in this video of a tigress at Kanha.) The only other notable events of the afternoon were seeing the youngest Langur we’d yet seen, a really tiny baby, and arriving at a place where a Sloth Bear had recently been seen, but where there were now only a bunch of jeeps.

Head of Lesser Adjutant (Image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons)

Local dancers in the hotel courtyard (Image courtesy of the Baagh Resort)

Happily, by the time we drove home, the Holi barricades were down, so we weren’t delayed. Lee was sitting on the bench in front of the hotel waiting for us when we arrived. I’d not taken a shower since we arrived, because Lee had tried to and had discovered that the control for switching the water from the tap to the shower produced only a trickle. He’d just managed to wash his hair before giving up on it (and of course we are both too diffident to complain). By the time I got back this evening, however, I was desperate for a shower, so I figured out that I could actually sit on the marble floor of the huge shower stall and be below the faucet. Having hot water flowing over me felt so wonderful. I consider running water, not writing, to be the real demarcation dividing civilization from non-civilization. The Indus Valley people had it long before anybody else, yet I have seen so many women carrying water over the past three weeks. Probably few of them will ever have running water, let alone experience a hot shower, one of life’s enduring pleasures. We dashed over to dinner, another very fine meal that I wasn’t really hungry enough to eat, which ended with splendid honey-glazed pineapple slices. As we have to be ready to leave by 5am, we didn’t linger over dinner, despite having changed our table to the other side of the room so that we could watch the dancers from the local area performing in the hotel courtyard.

My birds for the day: