Birds from our road trips - #1

I got a 50-230mm lens for my Fuji X-T100 few days back. Right before we went on our first road trip in the new car. So I thought I’ll make some good use of the lens and capture some birds. Till now even if I saw a bird, I’d never be able to know what it is because I couldn’t take a photo of them as they’re usually very far away, and also I wouldn’t even remember that I saw them by the time I get to home. Not anymore.. So here are some of the different species of birds we saw during our 4 day long road trip (a blog post about it is coming soon).

Near Pandavapura on NH150A

We stopped for a bit near the Pandavpura Lake and saw these fellows hanging around.

Grey-headed Swamphen

These are mostly seen in south-east Asia, middle-east, and in some parts of Italy for some reason.

Indian pond heron

Almost exclusive to Indian subcontinent, and in Taiwan for some reason.

Common Myna

Looks like these are seen in most part of the world, except big chunk of USA, Europe and Africa, Russia, South America and Canada. I wonder why they’re only seen in Florida and not in rest of the USA.

Ranganathittu bird sanctuary

This place has tons of birds that are both native and migratory. But due to lack of time, I could only take photos of some of them.

Spot-breasted fantail

These are almost exclusive to India. At first we thought this is White-throated Fantail, but then we saw on iNaturalist that White-throated Fantail can’t be seen in these parts of India. Then dug a little more to realize that this is Spot-breasted Fantail.

Spot-billed pelican

Mostly seen in south-east Asia. These are big birds. Can be upto 152 cm long. These flying around reminded us from scenes of Jurassic Park.

Cattle egret

These are seen almost everywhere in the world, except cold regions.

Painted stork and Black-headed Ibis

They’re again mostly south-east asian birds.

Great cormorant

These are seen roughly everywhere in the world, except most of USA, Canada and South America.

Asian openbill

Mostly seen in south-east Asia.

White-browed wagtail

These are almost exclusive to Indian subcontinent.

Kushalnagar

Crested serpent eagle

This was a lucky find. We stopped to top-up the petrol tank beside an open area full of green, and saw this fellow sitting on top of a tree. Could not get a clear shot because of a branch and I didn’t have enough space to move around. Again, mostly in south-east Asia.

Most likely Black Drongo

This was a lucky spot at the Nisargadhama deer park. Ayanti saw it far far away behind a barrier. Only had few moments to take this photo.

Hassan

White-cheeked barbet

Curiously, this bird is exclusive to the western ghat region of India! Saw it from our hotel window after waiting for like half an hour for a clear shot.

Mysore

Common Hoopoe

Spotted this at Mysore. Looks like it’s very much exclusive to the piece of land that consists of Africa, Europe and Asia. Somehow somebody spotted one in Australia too it seems. Curious.

[Yellow-billed babbler](Yellow-billed babbler)

How interesting is that this bird almost entirely exists in the southern part of India and Sri Lanka.

Purple sunbird

The friend’s place we went to in Mysore mentioned that a bird made home in their balcony inside a discarded piece of cloth, and it’s very fast, and wished me luck to take a photo of it. How lucky am I.

I really enjoyed spotting these birds and taking photos of them. I really hope to continue doing this. I’ll post photos of more birds I see around.