We came coursing through the area just 2 weeks
before with a singular vision to photograph Indian
Courser and quietly add the utterly drab Sind Sparrow to my personal life list. Today’s focus, within almost
the same hectares of Haryana state, was entirely different however. It was
about owls. India can rightly claim to be one of the best nightbird sites, by day. And this day proved just that,
by twilight we had seen 11 individual owls, of 4 species, our very own parliament.
Top target was Indian Eagle Owl, which in spite of its large nest betraying recent
breeding activity there, neither adult or pair of chicks were evident during an
extensive search near Dighal. While searching there though,
the easiest owl for the day put in an appearance, with a feisty 'fivesome' of Spotted Owlets battling each other for
vocal supremacy. Another eagle-owl
had a nest along the very same river too. A huge swarm of wasps clustered
immediately beneath that sticky structure did not bode well for the nest’s
potential within my thoughts, but Sanjay swept such pessimism aside, when he
calmly gestured towards a Dusky
Eagle-Owl quietly sitting alongside both nest and ominous looking swarm.
By
this point, and a dead camera battery later, (following relentless shooting of
wetland birds like Indian Spot-billed
Duck, Painted Stork, Bar-headed Goose, Eurasian Spoonbill, and Black-necked Stilt), pre-owl hunt, lunch was looming large in
all of our stomachs. Particularly for our driver, who rather belatedly revealed
he had skipped breakfast. India is so bustling with birds, and bird photography opportunities, that the scheduled lunchtime
kept shifting later, not least when a pair of Red-naped Ibis stood calling from a white-washed snag bathed in
gorgeous light for wielders of cameras. The heavy white staining indicating
this was not the first time they had sat there.
After a tasty local lunch in a worrisome looking
truck stop (‘Delhi belly’ is, after all, a rather too well-used phrase for my liking
in these parts), we were back in the field, and back on the trail of owls. Sanjay, smarting from our earlier
‘dip’ (i.e. miss) of the Indian Eagle-Owl
instructed the driver on a new destination. I dozed in the middle of the day
heat, intermittently waking to see Indian
Rollers and other avian brethren adorning dicey looking roadside cablery.
We arrived at Bhindawas, more known for species getting themselves wet than
tree-dwelling birds, but struck out along a bund in pursuit of our pointy-eared
quarry. As we walked the dyke to a given point we passed a party of peacocks, and enjoyed the omnipresent White-throated Kingfisher for about the
dozenth time that day.
Having struck out on the bund, we reached the ill-defined
turnaround spot having struck out on the owl too. We swiftly backtracked, with
our minds stridently conscious we had another owl opp. to fit in before the
onset of darkness over Delhi. As I casually soaked in a young Shikra perched in a tall tree, Sanjay
gestured in a very understated fashion to a gnarly tree beside us. On lifting
my binoculars, carefully hidden behind a dark tangle of twigs sat a bird with
two prominent plumed horns on its crown: Indian
Eagle-Owl. Evidently, we had both walked right past them without us either
noticing them, and a pair of them not flinching at our previous close passage.
However, once cryptic birds know the game is up, following a direct glare in
their eyes; their behaviour changes suddenly, and soon both of them were aloft
in the air on broad, silent wings, and glided their way across the river, but
stopped suddenly, and starkly, in the open.
My new camera battery was tested to the limit in this momentary lapse of bad
fortune with the species.
One final, and fourth, owl remained on
our agenda, and for that we needed to return to Sanjay’s home turf, Sultanpur.
The Delhi day was waning, and arguably we were too, but a milky, sweet Masala Chai soon fixed us, and we were
soon bumping our way through the Sultanpur Flats, which are not
perfectly-flat after all. We directed ourselves at one specific tree, but
needed to go neck-deep in a mustard seed field to reach it. We had not even got
in close range of the tree, and were indeed further away than a pair of local
farmers working the crop, when a Short-eared
Owl lifted out of the dense cover provided by said tree, and flew into
another one bereft of any cover, where it remained for some time. Two
incredibly inconspicuous others remained within the sanctuary of the original
tree until after we left.
With dusk now imminent, we attempted to leave for the
mega metropolis of Delhi, conscious of the likely heavy traffic that would try
everything it could to impede our return. However, this country is Hindu
country, where birds are left to roam freely and unhindered, and so they are
there in numbers, and famously tame on this part of the subcontinent, and so we
were also impeded by them in our attempts to bring the curtain down on a
wonderful ‘Delhi Day’; first a party of Yellow-wattled
Lapwings stalked around the car, and then an absurdly confiding Hoopoe virtually begged us to take its
photo!
The day had felt like an Indian Summer right in the depth of the country’s winter.
