We had just been birding in the Little Rann of Kutch and were making our way towards the Greater Rann, whose northern border actually forms the international border between India and Pakistan. The Greater and Little Rann collectively form what is known as “The Rann of Kutch,” an interesting type of environment. During the winter months the area is essentially a desert but it’s a unique form of desert known as a salt desert because during the summer monsoon the area is inundated with standing water and actually forms a salt marsh. We were visiting in January where the area really looks like nothing more than a desert but during the summer it is one giant mudflat. If you missed it in our last post, we had just ticked Sociable Lapwing, arguably our second best bird of our trip to India and one we did not expect to see.
The next morning found us in the thorn forests south of Nakhatrana searching for our main target of Gujrat, White-naped Tit. The White-naped Tit was easy when we arrived at the location at dawn. Truth be told, we were worried about this one because trip reports make it sound like this bird is difficult. We didn’t think so! The rest of the morning was spent walking the area seeing Syke’s Warbler, Jungle Prinia, and Ross finally managing to get pics of his number 6,000 that he saw earlier in the trip, Eastern Orphean Warbler. On the way out we made a pit stop at a garbage pile on the outskirts of the village where we had nice views of Syke’s Lark. Garbage on the sides of the road is quite common. Having a cow tied up in the middle adds to the allure. THIS is India.
We taught the phrase “hindsight is always 20/20” to our French-speaking Swiss companions who had never heard the phrase before when we were still missing Gray Hypoculis at the end of the day. We could see now that this was the bird we should have started our morning with, not the extremely responsive tit that would have perched up in the middle of the day. We tried mid afternoon for the hypocolius in a field of __ trees but with no luck and concluded that the following morning we would have to go super early for this bird. To increase our chances of actually seeing the bird, we coordinated with a local man, Mohammed, who agreed to take us out. We were warned that the numbers of this winter visitor were very low, once again likely due to the drought. Unfortunately for us, only one or two individuals were being seen. A highlight of the afternoon was Kiki, a bee lover, attempting to catch a bee in his hat so he could have a closer look for identification purposes. He failed but it was fun to watch! We also managed fantastic views of both Chestnut-bellied and Painted Sandgrouse just along the roadside. I also would be remiss if I didn’t at least give a shout out to Indian Peafowl, a real stunner of a creature. They are practically a dirt bird in India as the locals respect them and let them be. They are not hunted or really threatened so the number of birds we saw was quite high which is good because they are really pretty to look at!
That night we went on our first successful night drive of the trip (we’d been on 3 already) with sightings of a Indian Jackal, no less than five Jungle Cats, an up close and personal interaction with a Syke’s Nightjar, and an Indian Eagle-Owl sighting in its preferred element– darkness.
As I’ve mentioned already, on top of already harsh conditions there is an extreme drought exacerbating the issues and the desert habitat is dryer than usual so it makes sense that Gray Hypocolius numbers are down. We hoped that Mohammed could help us find the proverbial “needle in a haystack.” We must have been on to something yesterday because Mohammed took us to the exact location we had visited the afternoon before! We had only one target but unfortunately it did not arrive at the tree Mohammed had in mind. We staked it out all morning but it didn’t show which resulted in us walking quite a bit over the “habitat” aka land of a few fruiting trees outnumbered by hundreds of goats/sheep/cows. We followed Mohammed blindly with our hopes of seeing the target bird fading with each passing minute. By 9:30AM the heat had started to set in and we all but wrote it off as a dip (anyways, we could just see it in Oman!) It was mid morning, maybe 10AM, when Mohammed finally hears the sound. The bird was calling somewhere close! Ross played the sound back and a single female Gray Hypocolius flew right in front of us but we’d have to settle with flight views because the bird never perched, continuing on her way for at least a kilometer before we lost sight of it.
We then hit the road for our next target of the afternoon, Spotted Sangrouse. The location was quite a distance away so we piled into our over packed car for two hours until we arrived at the Eastern Banni Grassland. The details we had weren’t exact but at least we had something to go off of so Ross did what he always does, just figures it out and he navigated us down a dirt road adjacent to a powerline into the grassland. It didn’t take us long to spot a group of 40 Spotted Sangrouse out on the ground! Their yellow necks and pale backs made these birds very unique from the two species we had already seen but equally striking. From Eastern Banni Grassland we piled back into our car and drove for the next five hours to Jamnagar where we would be sleeping for the night with hopes of seeing Indian Skimmer the following morning concluding our time in the Rann.
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