Birding the Western Ghats in Southwest India








Western Ghats, a place of myths, we’ll be back!


Birding as a world citizen: ten tips

My favorite way to bird is related to the slow food movement: stay local, stay focused, and stay appreciative. So how can I keep to my principles when I bird in places as far away as the Western Ghats in Kerala, on the southwest coast of India?


Brahminy Kite

This is a legendary diversity hotspot and is near to a meeting I attended at NCBS in Bangalore, India. I try to bird as a world citizen, particularly in countries like India. I confess I did not exercise all of these tips this time, but will in future, and I hope this list helps you plan.

  1. Use a local birding company and guide. I really like to keep my dollars as much as possible with the people in the community. After all, they are the ones that will have the most impact on conserving the area. These local guides will know their birds. They will know where the Sri Lankan frogmouth roosts. They will be friends with the tribal people who show you how a different honeybee, Apis florea, nests. They will know where to walk in elephant country.
  2. Post to eBird and upload open access photos to Wikimedia. Ebird is a wonderful resource that only works if you post. Knowing I will post makes me take careful information. I get the GPS coordinates from my phone, either looking at the compass, or taking a photograph. Then I keep track of how far I walk with my Fitbit Surge which maps globally. I talk to the guides about local place names. I pay careful attention to how many of each species I see and what they are doing. I didn’t take photos of any note this time, but if I had, I would have uploaded them to Wikimedia with CC-BY-SA license. Please do this for at least one photo per bird.


    Dhanesh A. T. our excellent guide

  3. Bring your own map and lists. Some of the big birding companies provide you with lists and maps. They brag about how many birds you will see. It can feel too automatic, like numbers and checklists are the goal rather than feeling the magic of being in nature, listening to the birds, and connecting with a very special place. Local guides are less likely to have either maps or lists, so if you want these, bring them. What you need the guides for is to take you to great places, and to identify the birds.


    We try to be world citizens

  4. Don’t judge. You are in a different country with very different standards. Just remember they are likely to be using a fraction of the energy people in your home country use. The part of India I was in is very littered.  Leisure gatherings of people in public were nearly always only male. The dogs had their own people-free communities. Honking was a way cars, motorcycles, and trucks talk to each other. Some small trucks even have painted “sound horn” on the back. I have opinions on all these things, but I am a guest in their country. I can help only if I respect. I focused on listening to and inspiring young women.
  5. Try to learn about and understand local environmental issues. Our host had English language newspapers which made this easy. I could see that pollution of the Periyar river was a big problem, for example.

    Sunset near the Periyar river

    Even if you are in a country with a language you don’t know, you are likely to be able to learn about issues from your travel guide or from Wikipedia.

  6. Find a local environmental group and donate. I haven’t chosen where to give for our latest trip, but the Thattekad Bird Sanctuary is a guess. Here is more info on Kerala.
  7. Bring an extra copy of that wonderful bird guide you just bought. Local bird guides are unlikely to have acquired a new bird book. In our case, we were using the excellent Birds of India by Grimmett, Inskipp & Inskipp, and many illustrators that just came out in 2011. I deeply regret not bringing another copy to give our guide.
  8. If you have spare binoculars or a scope and tripod you never use, bring them. If you are like me, you have some older binoculars at home that you  have outgrown. I even have a scope that fits that category. Our host, the incomparable bird guide, Eldhose K. V., birded entirely without binoculars for 16 years until Sir David Attenborough came to film the rufous woodpecker for the Life of Birds. He gave Eldhose his first pair of binoculars. Local guides might have their own good binoculars, but what child or colleague might change their life with your old binoculars?
  9. Publicize the local bird guide you found. Use social media, your home bird group’s newsletter or whatever outlets you have to let people know about your local bird guide. You have access to publicity they do not. Some people are less comfortable with local guides without an international endorsement. Our guides, housing, food, transport were fantastic. We were met at the airport, cared for fabulously the whole time, shown amazing birds, all for a fraction of the cost of an international birding group. I’ve mentioned Eldhose K. V. before and will write more later on our trip.


    Eldhose K. V. Birding Lodge

  10. Tip and don’t haggle much. There is no good way to understand tipping around the world. I tend to decide on an amount per day with reference to various things I read. We tipped our guide about $30 USD/day, our driver half that, and our food providers and the organizer himself other amounts I don’t remember. If you visit a tribal community and they offer something for sale, there is no need to haggle.

    Muthuvan tribal ladies

    We bought a couple of baskets at asking price. Even if everyone haggles, if you are buying from the maker, you do not need to. The amount you save does nothing for you and could help them a lot.

Have fun as a world citizen and responsible birder!


Fourteen secrets of a Portuguese bird guide


  3. Check every bird in a flock.
  5. Eat an excellent lunch.
  6. Never guess the identity of a bird.
  11. Point out conservation efforts and actions.
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Birding from Lisbon, Portugal

Bernardo Barreto picked us up in his dark Ford at 7:30 from the Hotel Berna. We drove northeast out of Lisbon, crossing the Tagus on what might be called the third bridge, upstream from the 25 April bridge, half closed for a film shoot. The Saturday was cloudy and cool, but we knew it would not rain.

The first bird Bernardo identified for us was a zitting cisticola, a warbler with a wren-like tail at an angle to its body as it flitted in the dead reeds of the estuary. Its little body was vertically striped brown on tawny in a beautiful way just between the delicate wing shoulders. Would we ever have figured it out without Bernardo? Perhaps we would have because we had lots of chances to see it skitter and to hear it zitting.

Lisbon tourists take the yellow boat tour. They see the castle on the hill and wander the Alfama. They make take in some melancholy Fado, reminiscent of US country music. They eat grilled sardines or a soupy seafood rice dish. They go to the Calouste Gulbenkian and stare back at Rembrandt, or wonder what that Lalique dragonfly would look like in their hair. They squeeze into those open air taxis to see the sights before heading up to cool Sintra or down to the Algarve and its English beaches. But how many take the time to find a local birdwatcher willing to show them Portugal and its birds? How many spend the night across the river in Alcochete and eat eel or black boar and frothy green wine from a tap in Victor’s, a place so local they try to insist they are full, ineffectually denying our insisted upon reservation?IMG_7188

We saw several exotic birds well established here, common waxbills in post breeding flocks, a glorious yellow-crowned bishop weaver and a pair of black-headed weavers shyly nesting in a small colony of woven ball nests tucked down in the vegetation of an irrigation canal. I try to think fairly of the exotics, for after all, isn’t that what we are, pushing all across the globe and breeding like starlings, now with noisy flocks of teenagers? But of course Portugal is a place our species has been a lot longer than St. Louis is. It also has those hot dry summers that Jared Diamond says favored the growing of heavy seed crops and civilization. It felt good to be in this part of the cradle of humanity and witnessing the climate that let us store and thrive.

I could keep this to being a story of only exotics and ponder the noisy abundance of the waxbills in contrast to the sparseness of the weavers. I could relive those moments when I first saw the bright yellow male cautiously dropping deeper in the gloom as the dull female stood forward, yet both meters down from their precious green ball of young, hanging over the water, visible not to the cars driving past, but only to the birder stopping to check for just such a small colony. Don’t worry, still birds, we’ll leave now. You will be undiscovered until Bernardo or João brings another carload of eager birders.

But there were other birds not yet returned to African wintering grounds, or already back from northern breeding grounds and these were well worth seeing. As always, it is behavior, even the snippets one sees on a driving birding trip, that attracts me most. Feeding, nesting, and hanging out with mates are the commonest acts one sees and this trip was no different. Less compelling is the bird sitting there looking at you as you look at him, desperately matching eye circle or wingbar to the drawing in the book.

The white storks had huge stick nests on platforms high up the electrical lines sparking power into Lisbon. These towers had platforms for storks, as many as five of them, and slow spinning groups of three small spheres to keep them away from the dangerous areas of current.

The collared pratincoles were motionless on clumps of newly plowed field, but their less cautious and uncollared babies screeched for food anyway. They tied with the lapwing perhaps for most elegant bird.IMG_7197

As we finally left the northern estuary for the cork tree meadows, sighting a booted eagle stopped us, rabbit in talons. She sat on the bare mudpan, attracting flybys from carrion crows before soaring high with her soft prey.

Drink more cork  IMG_7202  ! These trees are harvested only every 9 years, by hand as the outer layer is peeled to the russet cambium and a number is painted on indicating the year of harvest. Only the bottom 4 meters or so of trunk is cut, making the trees look like they have entered on some sort of tree diet that involves carrot consumption. Older trees nearing harvest with numbers like 8 from 2008 are black barked, the thick cork cracking and fissuring in places. We passed a cork factory and an outlet mall, but nowhere to buy a cork trivet as a souvenir.IMG_7214

The penultimate sight of the day was a colony of bee eaters, brilliantly colored, improbably level flights. We could only see abandoned holes in the sandbank. Apparently the active ones were on the cliff on our side, which we did not approach. Nor did we approach the lone hoopoe, apparently on assignment for bird watchers, complete with a languid crest lifting.

The day ended where some of the best birding for us began, on mud flats, tide out, could be Bolivar flats in Texas with the spoonbills, herons, godwits, mallards, and coots. But the species were largely different, and the little fishing boats contrasted with the Galveston cargo boats.IMG_7223

You know I won’t tell you how many species of birds we saw. I have to wonder why you even want to know. You are not asking how many families of birds I saw, or even what the total count of individuals was, just what that great year, big day, birding challenge number was. What I will tell you is that birding, feeling the wind, watching the tide, seeing the estivating snails was the best day in Portugal yet.


Mexican-Ecuadoran secrets of the tufted jay, Cyanocorax dickeyi








Selected references







Scissor-tailed flycatchers at Mount Doom in Missouri









Birding the California coast at Coal Oil Point, Santa Barbara





Anna’s hummingbird


black phoebe


snowy plovers


willets at low tide.




marbled godwits



brown pelicans



white-tailed kites

