Thattekad and Munnar

With college starting up, trips have reduced considerably. A vacation provided me with some time off to hit Thattekad finally. Being off season, I didn’t expect to be seeing too much activity and although top priorities on my list were the Ceylon frogmouth and Indian pitta, I wasn’t very optimistic.

On reaching Thattekad we stopped at the home stay within the sanctuary late in the morning. Our host there, Mr. Giriesh arranged for our guide, his cousin who took us on the first round of birding that morning itself. On the way were loads of grey hornbills and Malabar parakeets while once we got in further, we found a few fairy bluebirds, white bellied treepies, ruby throated and grey headed bulbuls. The highlights of course being Ceylon frogmouths and a heart spotted woodpecker. Bad light and intermittent rain however prevented any decent photography.

The afternoon and evening were spent near the home stay watching a few orioles and another heart spotted woodpecker. Waited for a nightjar late in the evening but it did not turn up. After dinner we tried spotting a few owls. Although the collared scopps owl and bay owl did respond to the calls, none of them gave us a chance to see them.

The next day was spent entirely in Munnar and around. Early morning trip to Eravikulam national park gave us glimpses of a Nilgiri pippet, shortwing and a Vereditor’s flycatcher. There was a herd of Tahr’s in the distance as well but unlike my previous trip, they did not come close. After some landscapes and waterfalls, another nearby forest provided me with a shot of the Nilgiri flycatcher.

Another morning of birding showed up a blue bearded bee-eater, few other bee-eaters and more frogmouths, after this to kill time, we watched the sunset from a hill near Thrissur and then got back to college by a train to Trichy the next day morning. Do plan to return there during the season in December with a larger list of birds to be seen, but for a short trip in the off season, this was certainly fun.