Juvenile Tuesday

Note: Most of the bird-names mentioned here are links to photos which are taken by different people, and posted on sites like http://www.flickr.com/ or http://www.indianaturewatch.net/. You can click on them to see those pictures.

The garden in Magarpatta City continues to throw up surprises. Today, Dilip Sant, a friend of mine, and I, paid another visit to this garden. While walking through it, we saw juveniles of Red-Vented Bulbuls, White-Throated Fantail Flycatchers, Oriental White-Eyes and also of a Shikra!

Interestingly, all these are resident species. I have heard that the resident species of the subcontinent finish breeding before the winter migrants arrive. Today's sightings seem to confirm this. The tiny White-Eyes were especially a pleasure to watch. They were sooooo cute!They were hopping about a red-flowered bush, and were only 3-4 feet away from us!

Later, we also got a sighting of a juvenile Shikra! It had a yellow eye, and the brown streaks on its chest were quite noticeable. It perched for a while in the open, while on a Nilgiri tree, giving us an excellent view.

After spending a long time searching for the Red-Breasted flycatcher in the bamboo thickets, we were just heading off, when it suddenly crashed out of nowhere and sat out in the open, again, giving us a marvellous view. It was as if it wanted us to see it! We also spotted a few Ashy Drongos flying about in this area.

Earlier, we saw the male and female of the Pied Bushchat again. The male this time had a small white patch on its wing. Grimmett et. al. suggests that it was a "first winter male" which means that this too was an immature bird. That makes it 5 juvenile species in one day!

This is truly a wonderful place for birds.