For our first full day birding in India we headed to the Mandala Road, a stretch of road leading into the Himalayan Forest. It starts at the small village of Dirang before ascending the mountains. By the time we reached its summit we were already over 300 metres, and we could tell by the temperature, with a thin ground frost early in the morning and a light snowfall around lunchtime. The scenery was stunning throughout however, and we made several stops during the day for birding.
We arrived on the road before first light so we were in
position as soon as the birds woke up. Our first stop was about halfway up the
roads altitude, and despite the cold there was decent activity from the start.
The bushes along the road had a few Brown-flanked Bush Warblers and a stunning
male Golden Bush Robin, one of my all-time favourite birds after the individual
I saw during my last visit to India. This individual was not as showy, but just
as glamorous. As the morning wore on we picked up a few mixed species flocks,
mostly containing species I had seen on my last visit to the Himalayas, but also
a few additional species including finally seeing my first Red-billed
Leotherix, or Pekin Robin!
We finished this stretch of the morning with two more bush
warblers; Humes Bush Warbler and Grey-flanked Bush Warbler, as well as a lively
group of Streak-breasted Scimitar Babblers and a flyover group of Speckled
Woodpigeons. We made another short stop about halfway up where we had a
Southern Nutcracker, our first Black-faced Laughingthrush and a nice group of
Brown-throated Fulvetta. Then we headed for the top, where we would spend the remaining
two hours of the morning and then some of the afternoon as well.
The Mandala Top had more pine trees than the lower birding
locations, and as such the species composition was much changed. Here we had our
first Grey-crested Tits, the local race of Coal Tit and even a Goldcrest. There
were once again a few Black-faced Laughingthrushes and these were joined by two
very impressive Spotted Laughingthrushes, which showed nicely. A pair of
elusive Dark-breasted Rosefinch, a female Red-headed Bullfinch and a small
group of Grey-headed Bullfinch and a mobile flock of Yellow-billed Blue Magpie
rounded out the new birds for me. But the undoubted highlight of this stretch
of the birding was a brilliant Eurasian Wren that our guide found after I had
asked about them. This local race is much darker, and is an altitudinal migrant,
but this particular individual had a liking for sitting on the tyres of a
parked car and calling angrily!
The afternoon was more challenging as the snow and cloud
began to move in. Activity dropped markedly, as we continued to bird Mandala
Top with only one more mixed species flock found. Although it had another new
bird with Green Shrike-Babbler, most individual birds in the flock were too
mobile to get enough to identify them. There was a group of Arunchal Macaque
Monkeys feeding on the road before a passing car moved them on, which was an excellent
bonus for the day.
At the end of the afternoon we returned to birding the lower
altitudes, looking for the Fire-tailed Myzornis. We did manage to find a
single individual but it was very elusive and only showed up briefly for a couple
of us present. I was one of the fortunate ones, but it would have been nice to
had better views. A small group of Golden-breasted Fulvetta rounded out our first
day, seeing us back at the hotel in the dark at around 17:30, after and
exhausting but productive first day!
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