Balcony Birding

“Aamchi Mumbai” is where we both are from and where our hearts belong. Even though it is hot, crowded, polluted and not so clean nor green, it probably still is the best place in the world for us. We took a few days off this week and made a trip back home to Bombay.

Before we got into bird-watching, we had never imagined that birds other than crows and pigeons existed in the concrete jungles of Bombay. Guess we couldnt have been more wrong. Bombay has a very active bird-watching club (google for Mumbai Bird Club) which organizes bird walks almost every week, and they do get some amazing sightings on each of their trips.

Our formal attempts at birding turned out to be damp squibs. The visit to Sanjay Gandhi National Park in Borivili ended prematurely when we found the road to Kanheri (the recommended trail for birdwatching) was not motorable on our two wheeler. Subsequent attempts at alternate birding locations (hampered by lack of information) meant a truncated drive towards BNHS CEC (where a permit is needed) and a brief visit to Aarey Milk Colony (where we didnt know where to go). Nevertheless we stopped for 10-15 minutes for our first sighting of the Pied Starling/Myna.

The highlight of the trip however was “Balcony Birding”. The number of birds we could see from our homes itself was a big surprise. From our house in Goregaon, a bunch of around 3-4 white throated fantail flycatchers could be sighted everyday. Other regular visitors were the Red Whiskered Bulbul, Red Vented Bulbul, Purple Rumped Sunbird, Oriental Magpie Robin, Common Tailor Bird, some white doves and the most suprising one… the Coppersmith Barbet !!! A lot of bird calls could also be heard (including the WT Kingfisher).

And of course, there were hundreds of house sparrows; their incessant chirping could be heard throughout the day. It was almost a relief to find them so abundant in Bombay while they are rarely seen in Bangalore.

The trip was a good break from our routine humdrum and it felt great to be woken up at 6 in the morning with the shrill call of the fantail flycatcher rather than the usual doorbell of our maid or the maddening honking on Hosur road. …now though its back to the grind.