India; Northwest - Day 15: Little Rann of Kutch

   We had the full day to explore the Little Rann of Kutch wildlife sanctuary. Our agency had arranged a member of the park staff to drive us around to make sure we could have the best experience exploring the area, and hopefully see all of our target species. We started our drive at 06:45 and continued until around 10:30 when it was far too hot to continue exploring the area.

  It was strange morning, with much of our time spent clearly searching for target species but this information was not relayed back to us, so it often felt like we were travelling aimlessly across the desiccated landscape without an end goal in sight. We had a few commoner species that we were glad to see, such as Ashy-crowned Sparrow-Lark, Sand Lark and more Streak-throated Swallows, but in general for the first hour the birding we seemed to be travelling without purpose.

  Fortunately this improved when we made began driving around the bushes searching for roosting Sykes Nightjar, when we flushed two Short-eared Owls. Shortly after we explored a little on foot and found at least three Sykes Warblers, including an individual singing. And then for the last hour we continued searching for the Nightjar. Although the strategy of looking in rough grass seemed strange it eventually turned up the goods when our ranger managed to pick out a bird roosting in the middle of the desert. This eventually turned into three birds once we had got our eyes used to looking for them. This was our main target and we were pretty thrilled that our morning had ended on such a satisfactory note.

  The sanctuary is most well known for its population of Asiatic Wild Ass of the Indian subspecies, which now only occurs here. It took us about 45 minutes before we saw our first individual, but we then quickly found a group together and by the end of the morning we had seen quite a few individuals.

  In the afternoon we returned to the same area of the sanctuary, and had more success when we found three Indian Coursers on the edge of the water. We were able to get quite close, much closer than the last time I had seen them in 2018. We also spent more time filtering through the commoner waterbirds that were present, finding goodies like Dalmatian Pelican and wading birds. Afterwards we spent some time exploring the grasslands hoping for MacQueens Bustard, but we failed to find any. And then for the last light we visited the den of a Striped Hyena, but it failed to materialise before we had for dark, which was very disappointing. 

Species List:
Little Rann of Kutch: Greylag Goose, Ruddy Shelduck, Northern Shoveler, Eurasian Teal, Common Pochard, Grey Francolin, Feral Pigeon, Eurasian Collared Dove, Laughing Dove, Chestnut-bellied Sandgrouse, Greater Coucal, Sykes's Nightjar, Little Swift, Grey-headed Swamphen, Common Crane, Black-winged Stilt, Pied Avocet, Little Ringed Plover, Red-wattled Lapwing, Eurasian Curlew, Black-tailed Godwit, Marsh Sandpiper, Common Greenshank, Ruff, Temminck's Stint, Indian Courser, Slender-billed Gull, Little Tern, Gull-billed Tern, Caspian Tern, River Tern, Greater Flamingo, Lesser Flamingo, Painted Stork, Great Cormorant, Indian Cormorant, Glossy Ibis, Black-headed Ibis, Eurasian Spoonbill, Little Egret, Great Egret, Medium Egret, Grey Heron, Great White Pelican, Dalmatian Pelican, Steppe Eagle, Western Marsh Harrier, Pallid Harrier, Montagu's Harrier, Short-eared Owl, Asian Green Bee-eater, White-throated Kingfisher, Common Kestrel, Black Drongo, Isabelline Shrike, Ashy-crowned Sparrow-Lark, Crested Lark, Sand Lark, Sykes's Warbler, Sand Martin, Barn Swallow, Wire-tailed Swallow, Streak-throated Swallow, White-eared Bulbul, Lesser Whitethroat, Indian Robin, Siberian Stonechat, Desert Wheatear, Purple-rumped Sunbird, Purple Sunbird, Indian Silverbill, House Sparrow, White Wagtail, Tawny Pipit,