Congratulations on the Crab Plover -it's an absolutely cracking wader (I saw them for the first time last august in coastal Kenya).
A visit to the Lost Country.
The Little Rann of Kutch, or ‘LRK’ as my Indian friends dub it in typical acronymous modern Indian is for me one of the a hidden treasures of the subcontinent , not only surprising me but also my Mumbaiite friends with its variety and beauty. What is ostensibly pancake- flat semi desert is actually a patchwork of desert, wetlands, and agriculture, dotted with small villages which aside from the tractors and television aerials seems unchanged since the middle ages. In the winter the landscape takes on a monochrome character and the inhabitants, particularly the women make up for it with eye poppingly vivid clothing, studded with mirrors, set off with silver and gold ear rings, nose rings, bracelets and anklets. The male inhabitants sport extravagant beards and moustaches topped off with huge and flamboyant Pagadis, turban like whorls of cloth wound about their heads.
Road traffic is no less distinctive with the urban Ricks replaced by massively decorated Jeepny- like three wheeled vehicles called Chakdas, seemingly produced by hybridising a vintage motorcycle with a wheelbarrow. Equally capable of transporting ten or more people or an improbably huge pile of hay over deeply broken terrain with ease. We were here for the birding of course and once again LRK does not disappoint . When I was fortunate enough to be a part of the 2007 Mumbai bird race winning team, I won a birding trip to the Rann and my researches on the area were not encouraging. True, it seemed that the birds were there but the descriptions of endless tracts of scrub and salt pans did not seem particularly inviting. This, however, just goes to show just how much ones preconceptions can be wrong. But perhaps I should start from the beginning.
I set out , along with Parag, Sopnil and Girish, from the frenetic Bandra Terminus station in Mumbai on the evening of the 26th Jan for the overnight train journey to Ahmadabad, arriving there just before dawn. Before long we had located our driver and Toyota Qualis and were on our way to collect Riyaz, the fifth member of our group before departing Ahmadabad bound for the Blackbuck reserve at Valvadar, however we had scarcely left the city boundaries before we started seeing good birds. After a fruitful and enjoyable journey punctuated by stops at roadside ‘hotels’ for multiple cups of fragrant chai we arrived at the Valvadar Blackbuck reserve, a vast oasis of dry acacia scrub containing seemingly limitless expanses of grassland and of course, haunt of the fabled Lesser Florican. Over the next 36 hours we were to see a vast array of birds, a few uncommon, many plentiful and some entirely memorable. The Harrier roost in particular will stay in my mind forever, the sight of many dozens if not hundreds of harriers comprising Pallid, Montagues and Marsh congregating for the night as a vast red sun set over the thorny scrub was totally amazing. The sight of male Pallids floating effortlessly over the tops of the tall grasses became quite familiar but always enthralling. Mammals were also in evidence with several good views of Jungle cat, and Indian Fox in addition to the main attractions of the herds of Blackbuck and Blue Bull. A distant view of Wolves on a reserve track and a visit to a Hyenas den illustrated just who were at the top end of the food chain.! Larks positively swarm here with Greater Short Toed, Bimaculated, Crested, Rufous Tailed, Ashy Crowned Sparrow and Oriental being much in evidence. One thing we all noticed was the way that many of the birds we were seeing and attempting to photograph were clearly more confiding than their Maharashtran cousins, enabling us to get much closer than we had previously to some old favourites such as the ever present Red Wattled Lapwings. The guest houses at Valvadar were spotlessly clean, the guides helpful without being intrusive and the food uniformly delicious. I got my first really good views of Bay Backed Shrike, not a rare bird but a bit of a ‘blocker’ for me in the past. I left Valvadar feeling that I had only scratched the surface and of course without setting eyes on the Florican - not that we had expected to at this time of year as the birds spend all their time submerged in the endless seas of grass.
Our next destination was the Desert Coursers Resort at Camp Zainabad in the Little Rann but first we had a detour to Surendranagar to meet up with Yogendra Shah who had kindly agreed to take us to a local quarry to show us a pair of Eurasian Eagle Owls he was studying. Sure enough, just a few minutes after picking us up from our hotel we were training our binoculars on one of the most spectacular birds of the trip so far. We were able to watch and photograph to our hearts content as the regal bird surveyed us with what looked to me like clear distain, not that we minded! The quarry also produced some superb Variable Wheatears and a splendid Sulphur Bellied Warbler in addition to many of the usual suspects. After a sumptuous breakfast at Yogendras house we moved on through the seemingly endless miles of cotton fields, skidding to a halt on one occasion on seeing a herd of wild ass, the endangered Khur, a species of Onager, in a roadside field. A few more chai stops and we were at the Desert Coursers reserve, a wonderful and highly recommended place to stop, relax and get into the Rann for the many local specialities. This place simply vibrated with birds. We had been on site for less than five minutes before we saw a spotted owlet in one of the trees in the compound, this was to be the first of many and as I sit typing this, the screeching of these endearing little owls is virtually constant. Our host , the charming and hospitable Dhanraj Malik, disarmed me totally by enquiring after ,and displaying an intimate knowledge of Brighton, my home town in the UK! He also displayed a seemingly limitless knowledge of the local fauna and was able to point us in the right direction for the local endemics. Our first run out into the dessert was focussed on the must -see Mcqueens Bustard, Dhanraj estimated our chances at connecting with this endangered local speciality at around 50% so we were delighted to come across one within an hour or so of looking. The next target for my friends was the Short Eared Owl and within a short time we located one roosting under an acacia, getting close however proved difficult and as we cruised a likely area we put up half a dozen but were never able to get close enough to have a really good look. I was also able to get my first good look at sand grouse, a charismatic group of birds I had long wanted to see, they are so superbly camouflaged I found them almost impossible to pick out from their surroundings even though they were completely out in the open.
The Rann at this time of year is dry and dusty but the surface shows clearly that at times this ‘desert’ is inundated with water when it becomes a vast shallow salt brackish lake. At first glance it not only seems devoid of life but incapable of supporting it, nevertheless, wild ass or Khur, blue bull or Nilgai, hares and of course countless birds eek out a living there somehow. Larks in particular seem to swarm, with huge flocks of short toed larks skimming the ground around us as we drove across the flat dusty surface. The Rann itself is surrounded by a hinterland of acacia- like scrub consisting of one species, Persoposis juliflora, originally imported to prevent desertification, it is now the dominant species, occurring almost everywhere in Kutch. Nevertheless, this hardy and thorny plant provides cover for many species of animal and seems now to be an intimate part of the ecosystem. It is in this scrub and the agricultural areas surrounding the Rann that many birds can be found, whether its noisy parties of Rosy Pastors fighting over tid bits on the local rubbish dump or bank Mynas and Brahminy Starlings searching for morsels on the village outskirts there is always something to see. Particularly memorable for me was the Laggar Falcon we chased from electricity pylon to electricity pylon in an effort to get close to it, the field full of Indian Coursers we chanced upon driving back to a visit to the Rann, a superb melanogrisia Yellow wagtail by a pond at Camp Zainabad and the Eurasian Thick Knees, better known to me as Stone Curlew one of my eagle eyed friend spotted lurking in a cotton field.. Searches for Hoopoe Lark and Sociable Lapwing proved fruitless but we had never really expected to encounter these ultra rare species. Rather paradoxically the dry and dusty desert areas are punctuated by some wonderful wetland habitats. We visited Navatalan, only a few miles from Zainabad on a couple of occasions for the wildfowl and waders and were treated to views of vast numbers of birds, although for me my first Southern Grey Shrike was perhaps the highlight.
The relaxed and comfortable ambience of Camp Zainabad was to be all to soon left behind as we moved onwards, via an overnight train journey to Jamnagar for the last leg of our expedition.. At Jamnagar we were joined by Rahul Rao from Pune and assisted in our endeavours by Arpit Deomurari. Our first day was spend visiting the Khijadma bird sanctuary, a wonderful and huge wetland reserve that I could well have spent a week in. Here we saw a vast array of passerines, waders, waterfowl, raptors and , well many many others. We were greeted by wonderful skeins of pelicans flying from their nighttime roosts and the birds just kept coming. Especially exiting for me were excellent views of two Wryneck and the tuition I received from Rahul on the identification of Isabelline Wheatear, I am also still learning the Indian Larks and this visit proved helpful with close views of several easily confused ( to me) species.
The next morning we were up bright and early ( an understatement) for our trip to the salt pans on the coast near to Dwaraka. Along the way we were treated to a flock of approximately sixty Demoiselle Cranes feeding in a field next to the highway, this species completed our list of Cranes with Sarus and Common already on our trip list. Once at the salt pans it is impossible not to get good views of the many Black Necked Grebes that seem to thrive here along with the Flamingos, Pelicans, waders and egrets. It was not long before Riyaz shouted out ‘ Phalarope!’ and sure enough we had made contact with a couple of Red Neck Phalaropes which we watched and photographed for some time. I was fascinated by the rapid and unusual movements these birds make when swimming. Firstly they seem to sit almost ‘on top’ of the water than being actually ‘in’ it and secondly they can twist and whirl about, changing direction in an instant, a captivating bird that we were thrilled to see. Following a Thali lunch in Dwaraka we moved on to Port Okha where we boarded a boat for Byet Dwaraka a small and picturesque island famous for its ancient Hindu temple.
During the boat journey we were able to minutely examine the differences between the various juvenile and adult plumages of brown headed and slender billed gulls at very close range thanks to the packets of bird food sold by vendors on the jetty. Many of the passengers on the packed open boat delighting in the aerial antics of the gulls often coming inches from ones face in their desperation to snatch a morsel of food from the air. Following a visit to the temple we hired a Chakda to take a look at the island with its beautiful deserted clean sandy bays in one of which we saw a solitary Oyster Catcher. We got some excellent close views of the local Jackals as they came to drink at a temple pool but all to soon we had to get back to the picturesque little town to get the last boat of the day back to the mainland.
The next day we planned to visit Pirotan Island for the waders, particularly the Crab Plover. On arriving at the departure point the tide was very much out and the weather was cold and grey with a cool wind from the west so Arpit took us to a spot nearby where we got excellent views of Greater Thick Knee. The prospect of a boat crossing in the cold, especially as I had somehow managed to loose my sweater a few days earlier, made Parag and I decide to remain on the mainland and spend the morning with Arpit doing some woodland birding around Ranjit dam, here we felt almost as though we were back at Karnala with Flycatchers and Barbets aplenty!. In the afternoon we visited The Narara Marine park outside of Jamnagar where we were treated to views of Crab Plovers, Pacific Golden Plovers , Sand Plovers and sander lings before the rain came on and drove us back to the car.
The next morning we met up with our hardy friends who had journeyed to Pirotan and from their photographs it looked like a place that is a must for me to visit at some point in the future, preferably, the near future. A visit to the city lake in Jamnagar is certainly not to be missed and although our time was limited by our impending flight back to Bombay I was very impressed by the huge numbers and range of species of waterfowl and gulls that swarm there.
All in all a fantastic, memorable, physically exhausting and very exiting trip and I think I can say with confidence, one that was enjoyed immensely by all of the participants. I will certainly be going back to the Little Rann and am already planning my next trip to Jamnagar. All in I think we saw something like 185 species of birds although the final tally is still being prepared, I had 35 personal lifers but beyond these numbers and to me far more important was the eye opening experience of visiting Kutch with its diverse habitats, colourful and welcoming locals, delicious and different food and awe-inspiring landscapes. I can’t wait to go back!
Chris Searle
A thoroughly enjoyable report Chris. It's not a place I would ever have thought of visiting, well not until now!
Congratulations on the Crab Plover -it's an absolutely cracking wader (I saw them for the first time last august in coastal Kenya).
Great report, Chris - looks like you really had a great time in one of India's more "hidden" locations.
My trip for this year got cancelled, and reading your trip report helped a little bit - but also opened up a mental gash :)
Vandit