February 7th 2019
A long day but well worth it. Up at 04:30 and ready to leave
at 05:00 as long as it wasn’t raining. Rain at Sat Tal would mean snow up at
Pangot and we wouldn’t be able to get up there in our vehicle. Thankfully it
was dry and we set off on the winding journey up to the cheer pheasant with the aim of arriving at dawn.
The weather was OK on our arrival although the low cloud was
coming and going. Pretty much the first place we stopped I looked over the edge
of the road from the car and spotted a pheasant moving about under the trees.
Rachael then spotted a 2nd and when JP got onto the he called
CHEER!!! Amazingly they are normally incredibly hard to find on the steep
grassy slopes and we had 3 birds on the road in front of us! Target bird seen
before it had really got light at it was the first bird we’d actually seen that
day. It was the best views that JP had ever had and they can often take hours
of scanning the hillsides before seeing one.
male cheer pheasant - pic taken from inside the car, very early in the morning, resting the camera on the headrest!
We drove further along the road in
search of other species and had our breakfast on the edge of the forest where
we managed to add Himalayan woodpecker
to the list. The weather really wasn’t on our side with showers and low cloud
making it not possible to get out and walk much so we had to make do with
birding from the car. We did manage to add a few more high altitude species but
it would have been better to have walked. Having said that, we did manage blue-capped redstart, rufous-bellied woodpecker, chestnut thrush and Altai accentor but dipped koklass pheasant.
We dropped down lower towards Nanital where the weather was
better and it allowed us to walk the road. Birding conditions were still tricky
and an increase in vehicle traffic made the birding hard with new species being
added all the way back into town including black-headed
jay, green backed tit, black-faced warbler and maroon oriole.
We decided to head back to Sat Tal for lunch and
a quick session in the photographic hide before spending our last birding
afternoon searching the rivers south of the town. We managed to do well for
forktails (6 spotted & 1 little) but not slaty –backed that was a
possibility in the area.
Spotted forktails
A small diversion into a heavily vegetation valley near the hotel was excellent and we chanced upon a nice flock of birds. We followed them down into the valley and had good views of mainly white-eyes but the flock did include 2 tiny speckled piculet
We did have decent views of a chestnut-headed tesia hoping around the dense riverside undergrowth and our last new bird was a brown dipper in the fading light at the end of the day.
female blue fronted redstart
Buff barred warbler
Grey hooded warbler
Streaked laughingthrush
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