Another visitor from Europe!

Ruddy Shelduck is another one of those migratory birds that comes to India in October and leaves by April. They were in huge numbers at Vadhvana lake swimming about, flying around, strutting in the sun and enjoying the Indian winters! 🙂

I guess weary of us human’s they maintained their distance. Flying away every time I was about to reach a vicinity from where I could take a more detailed picture.

Usually found in pairs these fellows travel long distances and off they go the moment we near them!

Lakeful! :P

As they would say, it was a bounty at Vadhvana Lake! The lake was full of birds, birds and birds! Hundreds of Eurasian coots swim in the back ground as the two Cormorant’s decide to dry their wings!

Indian Cormorant

All those who ever complained of pigeon’s shitting and messing up the place never saw the Indian Cormorant! 😀 😀 These folks where ever they live white wash. You can see how this pole also has not been spared! I guess perhaps because they colour everything white, they have black feathers! 😀 😀

There are over 40 different types of Cormorants, which I just came to know whilst trying to identify what type of Cormorant this was! Apparently these are well spread all over the world! They dive in the water to fish. I am pretty sure a lot of you would have also spotted this fella commonly all over our country! 🙂

Bronze-winged Jacana

Whilst on the way to Vadhvana Bird Sanctuary, on the outskirts of Dabhoi village, there are lots of water bodies, quite a few of them shallow and with lots of vegetation. As I drove partly paying attention on the road, partly surveying around for birds, I saw something move on the vegetation!!

It was this fellow!

I didn’t know what species it was right away, I had to get a close up and then ask Shail or put it on Indian Birds to get to know the name! I loved the colours this fellow had! When I actually Wiki’ed this bird up I came across this very interesting fact!!!! 😀 😀 😀 I am sure all the ladies here will love this fact! 😀

Bronze Winged Jacanas have a territorial, sex-role reversed system. They are polyandrous, and the females are larger and more brightly colored than their male counterparts. The females compete with each other for harems of males to incubate their clutches of eggs. Each female’s territory encompasses one to four males and their individual territories. The density of breeding territories can be limited by habitat availability and the territorial competition with other females and their harems.

Green, flowery islet!

Floating in the middle of a lake, almost like on a small islet of green these fresh white flowers seem to be fluttering in the wind as they yearn to reach out to the blue skies above. Perhaps they are still disillusioned by the hue that the lake has coloured itself with, clearly unimpressed, they are wanting to go higher!

It is not usual to see waves in a lake, however, for the first time in my life I saw waves, almost like in a sea, in this lake at Vadhvana Wetlands. This year the monsoon had been particularly heavy in our parts of the country and perhaps that has ensured that the Wetland has way too much water even in the month of January! The day was particularly windy and perhaps that could be the reason for the ripples in the water. Thanks to the over abundance of water the bigger sized birds, pelicans, flamingo’s, painted stork’s have still not yet arrived here. Hopefully once the water recedes and the algae keeps developing the big boys should descend!

Green Bee Eaters

Found almost everywhere these lovely Green Bee Eaters never cease to make me want to click them. They have this peculiar colour combination that makes them look so so aesthetic and appealing to the eye! 🙂

Wire Tailed Swallows

I am pretty sure most of us have seen swallow’s flying about, whether we identify the species or not. They are always seen as pretty swift fliers in the air. Because they are tiny and fly fast at a distance they always appear black unless ofcourse you can manage some day to spot it from very nearby like I finally had a chance to do! 😀

These fella’s were flying at crazy speeds over the water in Vadhvana Wetlands acrobatically grabbing insects in their flight. This bird is an insectivore and mostly catches flies when in flight!! Finally this Wire Tailed Swallow rested for a few seconds on a window and I could get these snaps! 😀 😀

Western Yellow Wagtail

As we started walking around the Vadhvana Lake, a curious little bird spotted us, it would though keep a safe distance and jump/fly a safe distance away and look at us. Observing who these three were, where they were from. Every time we would get nearer it would again jump/fly and go further ahead and then again look at us, all the while, constantly, wagging its tail. Thankfully, I had just spotted this one earlier in Kadod and atleast for once I could identify it straight away for junior that it was a Yellow Wagtail! 😀

Interestingly it is another migratory bird, it breeds in temperate Europe. Its northern and eastern European population though migrates to Africa and South Asia and that is how we get to see this species. Its proper name is ‘Western Yellow Wagtail’, I must confess it is so much fun to identify these birds and then to read about them on wiki and other sites and get to know more about them. 😀