Mhaisal Birds - Through Mayur's Lens

A few months back, I received a call from Dr. Mayur Davda, from Mumbai. He is a Dentist by profession, and an avid nature lover. He had visited my blog and was keen on coming to Mhaisal to see and photograph birds. We decided on a date, I had requested him to come early in the morning at day-break. To my surprise, he was at our door at 6:00 AM! He and his cousin had come all the way from Sangli by motorbike in the chilling November weather.

We went to the Krishna river bank, and began our 'nature walk' from the Kankeshwar (Shiva) temple. We first walked along the bank, and spotted quite a few water birds, like Herons, Egrets, Coromonts, Kingfishers, etc. A large number of swallows, (could be easily around one to two thousand,) were sitting on the H.T. power lines. The interesting thing we observed, was the almost equal spacing (about 20 to 30 cm) between the swallows, as they sat on the power lines, each swallow had allowed a rightful space to it's neighbor.

We then walked along the Mhaisal Irrigation project road and came to our grape vineyard, which is on a lake front. We spotted Munias, Black Drongos, Shrikes, Kites, Hoopoes, Mynas, Peafowls and Sunbirds. Besides the birds, we also spotted a Rat-snake!

At Kedar-Laxmi Niwas, our house, we saw, the spotted Owlet, perched on the canopy support, and Brhamaney Kites, who have decided to make our garden their nesting place, sitting majestically on the tall Drooping Ashoka trees.

Dr. Mayur, went on clicking with his camera. His enthusiasm was so great that some times, when he got engrossed with a particular bird, he would simply not stop clicking and we had to plod him to come with us. 
I must say we enjoyed Dr. Mayur's vist to Mhaisal.

He has just uploaded a compilation of some of the pictures he took at Mhaisal. It is really good. Do watch it.