Fishing the Fish Eagle...!
Even though I am into birding for quite a longtime... never got time to put things on paper... & I regret for the fact that I am bad in that...L. This time I have made up my mind to write this so that I can share this information with all birders and also to contribute my bit to bng birders database.
I have been associated with Nisarga Organisation, working on promotion of Outdoor living & wildlife conservation for many years now. We are organizing a series of river rafting programs at Bheemeshwari (Cauvery River) from last month. It is after the first visit to Bheemeshwari in July as part of our Captive Elephants project, I was very keen about knowing more information about Grizzled Giant Squirrel which is almost in the verge of extinction. I used to read anything & everything about Bheemeshwari to gather more n more info about these beautiful animals. In course of doing that I came across a posting in Bng birds about Lesser Fish Eagle - LFE (Ichthyophaga humilis) & Grey headed fish eagle - GHFE (Ichthyophaga ichthyaetus) with photos. I was very amazed to know about them & also was feeling bad that very less is spoken about these animals & birds in the shadow of tiger. Although I compared quite a few photos and referred many articles on web it was hard to analyze the difference between these beautiful birds. However as I visited Bheemeshwari often as part of my river rafting camps I started looking for these birds with white colored lower belly, thigh and tail part which is again a similarity among these birds. On my every visit I used to get information from Gurudat, Naturalist there that they are found more on the up stream of Cauvery from Bheemeshwari campsite. I very less got an opportunity to access the up stream as I had to be with the team always and also rafting happens in the down stream of Cauvery from campsite. My continuous search for them didn’t yield any result in the last 5 visits. My last visit was on Monday 2nd October, Gandhi Jayanthi day, since it was a holiday we had a batch booked again for rafting and we landed there in the campsite. As Nisarga is an organisation concerned about wildlife we always make an effort to introduce our clients / participants with loads of information on eco system, wildlife, birdlife, culture, environmental issues etc of the place where we have visited. It was to my surprise I saw 2 birds flying over head & could notice the white lower belly and tail parts at around 11:45am when I was addressing the crowd there. It was undoubtedly a pair of them flying towards the downstream of Cauvery. I am not very sure to say whether they were LFE or GHFE as I still don’t understand the significant difference between them but I am sure it was one of them because of that characteristic white lower belly parts. That day seem to be very good for us as we could see it again very closely flying on the river again down stream as we were trekking back to the campsite. This time it was very close to me and I could see those startling eyes with a striking yellow & black combo. Other thing I noticed was they were just kite plus in size and there was grayish color around the neck & head part. In fact the tail was blunt, short & under part was lacking that significant white which I have seen in GHFE photos. Unfortunately I didn’t get to hear its call, which I think would have made huge difference. I found raptors very challenging when it comes to its identification because of the wide variety of variation of features among the species in itself. This will always be one of my memorable sightings after that of sighting of Great Indian Bustard in the month of May this year…
I have been associated with Nisarga Organisation, working on promotion of Outdoor living & wildlife conservation for many years now. We are organizing a series of river rafting programs at Bheemeshwari (Cauvery River) from last month. It is after the first visit to Bheemeshwari in July as part of our Captive Elephants project, I was very keen about knowing more information about Grizzled Giant Squirrel which is almost in the verge of extinction. I used to read anything & everything about Bheemeshwari to gather more n more info about these beautiful animals. In course of doing that I came across a posting in Bng birds about Lesser Fish Eagle - LFE (Ichthyophaga humilis) & Grey headed fish eagle - GHFE (Ichthyophaga ichthyaetus) with photos. I was very amazed to know about them & also was feeling bad that very less is spoken about these animals & birds in the shadow of tiger. Although I compared quite a few photos and referred many articles on web it was hard to analyze the difference between these beautiful birds. However as I visited Bheemeshwari often as part of my river rafting camps I started looking for these birds with white colored lower belly, thigh and tail part which is again a similarity among these birds. On my every visit I used to get information from Gurudat, Naturalist there that they are found more on the up stream of Cauvery from Bheemeshwari campsite. I very less got an opportunity to access the up stream as I had to be with the team always and also rafting happens in the down stream of Cauvery from campsite. My continuous search for them didn’t yield any result in the last 5 visits. My last visit was on Monday 2nd October, Gandhi Jayanthi day, since it was a holiday we had a batch booked again for rafting and we landed there in the campsite. As Nisarga is an organisation concerned about wildlife we always make an effort to introduce our clients / participants with loads of information on eco system, wildlife, birdlife, culture, environmental issues etc of the place where we have visited. It was to my surprise I saw 2 birds flying over head & could notice the white lower belly and tail parts at around 11:45am when I was addressing the crowd there. It was undoubtedly a pair of them flying towards the downstream of Cauvery. I am not very sure to say whether they were LFE or GHFE as I still don’t understand the significant difference between them but I am sure it was one of them because of that characteristic white lower belly parts. That day seem to be very good for us as we could see it again very closely flying on the river again down stream as we were trekking back to the campsite. This time it was very close to me and I could see those startling eyes with a striking yellow & black combo. Other thing I noticed was they were just kite plus in size and there was grayish color around the neck & head part. In fact the tail was blunt, short & under part was lacking that significant white which I have seen in GHFE photos. Unfortunately I didn’t get to hear its call, which I think would have made huge difference. I found raptors very challenging when it comes to its identification because of the wide variety of variation of features among the species in itself. This will always be one of my memorable sightings after that of sighting of Great Indian Bustard in the month of May this year…
posted by Unknown @ 3:20 PM
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