It is pitch dark but not heavily raining like monsoon season. The early morning light showers coupled with thunder was surprise visitor. The rains did not match the level of darkness or intensity of thunder. It hardly rained around 3mm. But the rains were enough to retain considerable ground moisture. Many of the birds were seen moving around during the rains. The avian buzz increased when rains stopped after a while. Despite the darkness, I went for a short walk to see who is active post rains.
Lets begin to last evening birds. For first time, I spotted pied bush-chat in my village last evening. Here are some for records. It was cloudy and hence background is white washed.
From evening, back to event post morning rains. The black hooded oriole came early.
The barbets seemed to be used to humans. This time I have seen them at eye-level on most occasions. They generally arrive nearby house to savour papaya for breakfast. Today they arrived a little late due to rains. This bird is camouflage during monsoon with its green matching with vegetation. Sometimes unnoticed unless its flies as you approach. The presence is conspicuous with typical koo-proo repeated calls from top of tree or hidden in dense canopy. The start of their call resemble the engine boots of our village service buses of 1990s :-D
Later I went for short stroll looking again for flame-throated-bulbul. Alas! I could not find it. However, I heard hornbill voices loud which means they dwell at nearby forest. We hear racket-tailed drongos but this time no luck again.
Meanwhile the electric line was looking electrifying hunting platform with stork billed kingfisher joining bee-eaters and white throated kingfisher. The ground was as always abuzz with waders picking their morning breakfast.
This bee-eater was tossing and smashing the prey but it turned out to be costly. The white-throated spoiled its hunt and green-bee eater was back to its hunting position. A lovely breakfast was overturned by aggression/jealous of white throated kingfisher.
Stork billed was a surprise visitor at our area. Seems like the bird was in unpleasant mood due to rains. The body was wet and had not interest in hunting. Assuming that no signs of sun rising today, it flew away towards the dense canopy perhaps to resume its hunting session.
A jungle myna was seen haphazardly balancing over the cow for nice bugs. The body of cow seemed to be wet due to rains. The skidding myna was struggling to balance over the cow. It was like "Hey buddy can you slow down your movement, it's becoming difficult to balance" for every movement of cow. Nevertheless the cow did not seem to heed to myna's request and continued grazing in its own way. The myna had to manage on its own later
Cattle egrets were absconding for a while. As rains subside they are back to action to groom the bug ridden cattle. They had an eye my move as well!
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