Saturday, 30 November 2024

Northeast India; Day 9 - Kaziranga National Park

  Today would already be our last day entering the Kaziranga National Park, with two more drives scheduled; one in the morning and the other in the afternoon. Having seen Tiger the previous evening, we would be able to enjoy a much more relaxed pair of game drives, with few birds left that we wanted to target. 

  We did our morning game drive in the Western Sector of the park. It being Saturday, it was significantly busier than the drive the previous morning in the Eastern Sector. Still, we managed to make it work for us, and we had a few good bird species. The highlights on the bird front were in a small patch of woodland where we had a smart male White-tailed Robin, a nice Orange-headed Thrush and a male Kaliji Pheasant, the latter of which would not come out of the undergrowth for us. We additionally had our first Greater Adjutant stork, which was distant on the other side of one of the larger lakes we stopped out.

  On the mammal front we had our closest India Rhino encounters, with a few individuals standing right next to the road feeding away in the aquatic vegetation. Otherwise we had the same selection as we had the previous days, minus Indian Elephant and Tiger, but also gaining Asian Smooth-coated Otter of which we saw a group of four individuals at our first stop, before a single sunbathing on one of the lake islands!

  In the afternoon we returned to the Central Sector of the park where we had encountered the previous days Tiger, but there was to be no repeat this time, although we heard the alarm calls of deers. We enjoyed some brilliant Indian Elephant feeding in the tall grass, as well as more Indian Rhinos and a few nice Water Buffalo. This was our only drive where we encountered the Sambar deer, with two feeding in the woodlands at the far end of our drive. In one of the rivers we also added Assam Roofed Turtle to our trip list, a localised species we had hoped to find.

  On the bird front it continued to be excellent, although much the same species as our other visits to the park. We added Blossom-headed Parakeet to our trip list, which was one of our few target species for this site. Another target was Slender-billed Vulture, and after some putative flyovers, this time we drove under two active nests with adults sat in their respective trees, giving excellent views. Other goodies included our first Ferruginous Duck and Temminck’s Stints of the trip, giving a little flavour of home

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