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November 1999

    The house was so full of guests, and they came one after the other.   So there was no time to watch birds peacefully

November 2000

            The kingfisher is around almost all the time now.  November has been a good month too.  There are plenty of orioles in the garden – mostly golden ones and they make a din on the fir tree.  The occasional magpie robin comes in too, and the tree pies are less obvious.  The koels have more or less disappeared.  Plenty of drongos around .  They are so agile and make deep dives.  They are especially fun to watch in the evenings.  These are mostly the smaller ashy drongos.  The barbets now move around alone and they come in just before dusk.  The sky is full of dark flitting birds n the evening, swooping upon the dragonflies.  They are the large whiterumped swift and often, the house swift. And the house martin too.  I still have to identify them properly.

            Along the Zuari bridge, I think it is the Alpine swift that I see flitting along the side of the bridge.

            This month we went to Jodhpur (Rajasthan).  It was a real treat!  On the day of our 'village safari', we  stopped at a wet-land and saw some beautiful birds - the demoiselle crane, the teal, the grey crane, the stilt, the spotbill, doves and the imperial pigeon, partridges, a peahen with chicks.

November 2001

            I�ve been away for two months so there have been no observations for September and October.  But now I�ve come back from the US equipped with a digital camera and a telescope � gifts from the boys!!  The camera fits onto the telescope and lets me take clear photos of distant objects.

            Went to check out Carambolim.  Its been cleaned up � but its pretty dry.  There were a few purple moorhens, purple-headed cranes, coots and jacanas, a kite, and pairs of whistling teals.  Not too many.

            My treat has been a sparrow-hawk.  The first two days one alighted onto the swing bar and stayed for a good while.  I took a short movie clip of it eating a worm.  Now I see a pair.  I think one is a juvenile, and one is a parent.  They spend a lot of time in the garden.  Other than them, I have only seen the bulbuls and the occasional sunbird � and ofcourse, the coucal.

            We have had a viper in the porch.  The camera allowed me to get some super pictures of it.  Dileep gently pushed it into the drain.  We watched its side-winding movement.  It is really warm weather.

            Today, the 24^th, has been a good bird day.  The hawk sat upon its perch waiting for me and watching the heron find worms.  Yesterday the hawk, a juvenile male, found his place occupied by a crow.  He did a side-ways dance and edged the crow off the bar.  The crow flew onto the other side.  This went on for a bit until the hawk lost patience and flew at the crew with his talons out and chased him right off the garden.

            Today the hawk put up with a bunch of really noisy babblers for a good half hour and then flew screaming at them, ad then disappeared to the top of one of the tall trees � away from their noise.  There were red-whiskered and black-headed bulbuls, barbets, two coucals, three parakeets, drongos, a tree-pie, sunbirds, and the jungle babblers.  Maybe more will start coming.

November 2002

The sparrow hawk is back on his perch and he sits there for a long time.  I have had a large part of the cliff cleaned, so I hope I get to see a lot of birds.  The plain flycatcher and the sunbirds flit about the cordia and the bottle-brush.  The crow-pheasant is also regular.  So is the kingfisher.  Lots of pairs of drongos and orioles.

The sparrow hawk likes to walk on the grass and find worms.  The grey-headed wagtail is back and so is the white-throated ground thrush (male).

We found a jackal in the Goa Shipyard colony on the 13th.  That is a story by itself!  Look in my 'A Zoo in Zuarinagar' page.

    Mid-november � It has been a brilliant morning.  Yesterday, a nightjar sat under the cycus.  I thought it was my sparrow hawk sitting close ot the ground, but it stayed still for long.  That�s when I looked through the binocs and saw the eyes, the short legs, the feathers, the beak, and the streaks.  This morning, the sparrow hawk went off elsewhere.  The kingfisher decided to walk on the lawn until the drongos arrived.  Then it established supremacy by climbing onto a higher perch.  A racquet tailed drongo displaced the ashy drongo, which in turn pushed off the bulbuls and the orioles.  There were some ioras too.

            The sparrow hawk has been threatening the crow-pheasant too.  The latter sat inside a bougainvillea bush and the hawk kept trying to get at it.  As soon as it emerged, the hawk would swoop down and push it back into the bush.  The kingfisher is the only one who tries to hold his own against the hawk.  

November 2003

There are a lot of snakes out on the road.  It is hot and they come out in the evening.  The peacocks can be heard once in a while as well.  The neighbours spotted a large horned owl � but I haven�t seen it as yet.