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May 1999

The place is full of tree pies and vast kinds of bulbuls.  The tree pies seem to have a kind of bob at the end of the tail sometimes, perhaps it is a particular time of moulting.  There are two new bulbuls that I have identified – the black-headed yellow bulbul and the white- browed bulbul.  The white-browed one is quite common and moves around with its mate.

            Saw a pied crested cuckoo.

            There are a lot of koels around here.  They eat berries from the mast trees.  The females are spotted, and they are larger and heavier looking.  Two of them sit along the fence, one on each tree.  The males are a glossy black and have red eyes.  They are less easy to spot because they are shy and tend to get in and under the foliage of the trees.

            Saw a shyama several time whilst at the guesthouse.  Thought it was the tree pie at first.

May 2000

            We watched a pair of red spurfowl walk across the road, and then we watched them spend a lot of time along the fence at the bottom of the garden.  Saw a lot of goldmantled chloropsis.  The koels have been busy calling all through the last few months.  They are in pairs and the female looks very obviously gravid.  She is heavy and spends most of her time in the sun on the trees.  It is dry weather now.

            The shrikes are around.   Along the road I have often seen the grey shrike, but not in the garden.  In the garden, the smaller rufousbacked shrike appears.  It has a bandit like black band across its eyes.

            For the first time I saw a mynah in the garden.  I had commented on the fact that the common mynah wasn’t around over here.  This one had a kind of tuft just over the beak.  It was the jungle mynah.  I have since seen it near the paddy fields at Carambolim.

            The sunbirds have started appearing in greater numbers once more.  There are the purple rumped sunbirds, the yellow sunbirds the yellow backed sunbird, the purple sunbird, and the olive backed sunbird.  I saw the Loten’s sunbird for the first time.  The females are all very dull olive, and apparently so are the non-breeding males.

May 2001

            The yellow-backed sunbird has arrived once again and sits upon the cordia tree for long spells.  It is beautiful and so brilliantly red that I wonder why it is called the yellow backed sunbird..  There is a batch of a new kind of babblers in the garden too.  They are not as noisy, and smaller and neater.  They have white chins.  They are the tawny-bellied babblers and three of their species have white throats.

            While on my morning walks, I have seen the yellow-cheeked tit frequently.  The spurfowls have two young ones now, and all four of them walk along the fence in the morning.

            The white-bellied sea eagles have nested somewhere on the cliff and I see them fly up and do their foraging rounds.  They fight noisily too.

End May � The monsoons have set in now � exactly as they did two years ago when I moved in.  The weather is wonderful and one can see the white �sea-horses� riding the waves.  The sky and the sea are incredible shades of grey and dark blue.  The pattern of the sky keeps changing and one can stare at it for hours.  I have been away for almost two weeks.  Dileep and walked along Utorda beach.  The sand is caked and the rain stings because it comes down with wind force at a slant.

May 2002

                It is warm and humid.  There are ioras, bulbuls, babblers, orioles, doves, treepies, sunbirds and barbets regularly.  The ashy wren-warbler still wanders around singly.  Plenty of koels.  Now the males scrap over berries and they call through the day.

                The birds are in pairs.  After a long time, the golden backed woodpeckers came and a pair of them pecked at the coconut tree trunks.  There are a pair of black-headed orioles, the ioras, all the bulbuls, and the crow-pheasants. 

                The first rains came on the 5^th � and after two days there was a storm.  The sea looks lovely now.  The firstt monsoon finally broke on the 19^th of May.  They say this is not the actual South West monsoon as yet.

                The crested serpent eagle came back once more and allowed me to see the markings on its wings.  The Malabar thrush visited us one evening and Dileep got to see the blue epaulets as well.  The Southern birdwing is doing a rip to Bondla, but I think I will go on my own instead.

                The munias are back now and the kingfisher pays us the occasional visit.  A small Besra hawk also sat on one of out trees.  The yellow-cheeked tit is back and a pair of gold-mantled chloropsis have decided to make the alphonso tree their home.  This is the first time that we have had bee-eaters in the garden � plenty of them in the evenings.

                The crimson-breasted (yellow-backed) sunbird are here too.  

                  May 2003

The birds I the garden are not very exciting this month.  The last of the koels, lots of bulbuls, some orioles and the sunbirds.  At the beginning of the month there were a lot of the black-lored tits.

There was a snake at the bottom of the garden  - it was enormous and I think it was the cobra.  It spent a good while sunning itself on the bougainvillea bush, and then it wandered along the garden hose.  It is thicker than the hose.  It slid along the garden and climbed up the banana tree near me.  My telescope and camera and me moving around didn�t bother it so obviously it is used to me!  It must have been at least 6� long � maybe it was the same one that moulted earlier.