A Photo Blog: My trip to Saat Taal -Pangot- Uttarakhand Part 2

Apart from the smaller birds, we saw many varieties of bigger birds- all very spectacular. Here are some of them-

Blue Whistling Thrush

This Blue Whistling Thrush has a very sweet whistling call & every morning, it would be seen perched on a pole on our hotel building calling merrily...

Red billed Blue Magpie

This bird has such a long tail- almost reminiscent of Paradise Flycatcher... But it is a very aggressive bird with a very different call...

Black Francolin- male

Black Francolin- female

Oriental Turtle Doves

Bronzed Drongo

 

Grey Tree pie 

 

Black headed Jay

We saw 4 types of Woodpeckers- the Brown fronted Woodpecker, Grey headed Woodpecker, Lesser Yellow naped Woodpecker & Rufous bellied Woodpecker( the last one we saw at Pangot). Of the 4, the Brown fronted Woodpecker was v commonly seen & it gave us such wonderful poses that I might have clicked its 400-500 photos! It was one of the most still & stable birds. Here it is-

Brown fronted Woodpecker

Another beauty that we saw was a bird from the Pheasant family- the Kalij Pheasant-

Kalij Pheasant- male 

Kalij Pheasant-male & female 

We also saw two species of owls- the smallest owl (perhaps in India)- the Collared Owlet & also a pair of Brown Fish Owl...

The Collared Owlet was chased away by other birds from Himalayan Bulbul to Drongo. With the Owlet around, the birds had become very restless..

Collared Owlet 

We saw the pair of Brown Fish Owl at Chafi, Saat Taal... They were perched high up in the mountain gorge & we had to almost to a mini trek to go closer to them. But the effort was worth it... They were almost waiting for us to come so that they could pose!

Brown Fish owl