The Almost-tyred Bird!

Four of us…Debankur Biswas, Ravindra and Supriya Kulkarni…went to Jayamangali Blackbuck Sanctuary, staying overnight at Madhugiri. I was thrilled to realize that the others were visiting this grassland for the very first time, and indeed, each time they sighted a bird, or even enjoyed the landscape, it took me back to my own first visit, and gave me the joy once again.
Our visit was very productive (in terms of birds, this can be seen from the eBird trip report at  https://ebird.org/tripreport/103012 (111 sp). We saw many Blackbuck stags, does and fauns too, and the occasional Mongoose ran across our path; we could not see any foxes or jackals, and I was rather surprised by the low number of Harriers that we saw. Of course, one flew just a few feet overhead when all of us were eating a few snacks at the watchtower, and not even I had a camera in my hands! 
However, all this must be quite familiar to those of you who have visited the Blackbuck Sanctuary…so I’d like to share a sighting which was certainly unexpected, and which, Ashwin says, has not been reported from Jayamangali before.

We were driving very slowly along the path when Deb suddenly halted and pointed to a Sandgrouse which was so well camouflaged in the undergrowth that it took me a few minutes to spot it. “How did you spot it, that, too, while driving?” I asked him. His reply was, “It moved from the path of my tyre, so I saw it. It just froze right next to the path.”

After looking at it carefully from inside the car, we slowly emerged and were able to photograph the perfectly still bird….I call it the “almost-tyred bird” since it had almost come under the tyre of our car, and seemed too tired to move.

When we moved to get back into the car, with the usual noisy flapping of wings, the bird took off…accompanied by another, which, in spite of being so near it, we had completely failed to spot, so well hidden was it, in the grass! As usual, we were startled, and then thrilled to see the two disappearing forms. Talk about effective camouflage!  We had seen eight Chestnut-tailed Sandgrouse in flight the previous day, and since only that bird has been seen in the sanctuary area, we assumed these two were the same bird.

Both Supriya and I felt that there was “something different” about the bird, and I did feel that this was a different bird. I was too ill by the time I returned to do more than caption my photos and post it to my album in Flickr. Supriya persisted in saying that the “eye was different” but I lacked the energy to follow up on my suspicion too. 

But, just to prove that our experts are experts for a reason, Ashwin followed it up! He saw my photograph and immediately messaged me that the bird was a Painted Sandgrouse, (the markings on the head and around the eye are indeed different)  which has not been reported from Jayamangali before this. Certainly this upped our HQ…Happiness Quotient.
I am appending a photo of the Painted Sandgrouse (female) from the Jayamangali Blackbuck Reserve, taken on 22 Jan ’23. So friends..when you visit the Blackbuck Reserve….you have one more bird to look out for!

 
We are not all expert enough to find new species of birds like the dedicated band which went to the remote wilds of Arunachal and sighted one:

https://www.iasgyan.in/daily-current-affairs/lisu-wren-babbler

But for us, getting a new bird in a known location is thrill enough, adding to the happiness of seeing so many birds over two visits to the Blackbuck Sanctuary. A very rewarding visit indeed!
I suppose this is not the scientific, erudite “write-up” of a new bird-sighting, but I prefer to make a nice anecdote of it.

Tags: birding, karnataka, nature, photography, recordings, tumkur, wildlife