Sonar Desert Camp. We had an early rise for 6.15 breakfast, then a drive to the Desert National Park. It was still dark and quite cool, so I was glad of my fleece. The main target today was Indian Desert Bustard. This bird is highly endangered, with about 50 birds in the park, and the main reason for the trip. As we entered the park, Ranbir went and checked us in and then we started driving the trails, some of which were quite rutty in places. As we went we saw Steppe and Imperial Eagle, Egyptian Vultures, lots of larks, with Short-toed, Desert and Black-crowned Finch-lark as well as Great-grey Shrike, House Sparrow and Grey Francolin.
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| Black-crowned Finch-lark |
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| Imperial Eagle |
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| Grey Francolin |
As we were watching an Imperial Eagle, I called a raptor coming our way which turned out to be a Great Indian Bustard, followed by 8 more! Ranbir watched them and then turned the car round and drove along until he found where they had landed. The views were great, but a bit too distant, and still quite dark, for decent photos. We watched the nine birds interacting for some time, before finally moving off, looking for other species, especially Cream coloured courser. We had more larks,etc. then the car slowed up and ahead of us was a male bustard in the undergrowth. The cars approached fairly close then stopped and we waited for the bird to come out which it did before too long. We had prolonged, excellent views as the bird slowly walked about, pecking and then it found a spot and started displaying. It puffed up its throat feathers, cocked his tail, put his head up and gave a low grunt. After a while, another vehicle came along and pulled up beside us, before moving closer and causing the bird to slowly walk away, we called it a day, turned round and started making our way out and back for lunch.
| Great Indian Bustard |
On the way, we had a comfort stop where David found some Crimson Speckled moths and at one stop we had a Spiny Lizard.
Day 3 -pm
We met up at 3.30 and set off for another part of the area, driving around the desert area, stopping for birds and a Desert Fox, which trotted away very purposefully after it saw us.
We had good views of Chestnut-bellied Sandgrouse, Egyptian Vultures, Steppe Eagle, Greater Short-toed and Bimaculated Larks among the usual desert birds plus Common Babbler and 2 White-browed Bushchat.
We drove around until dark, using the thermal to look for mammals, but all we saw were Chinkara, and then came back for dinner at 7.30. We stopped for a scan round and to enjoy the sunset, distracted by a very loud tractor going by with a huge boombox trapped to his seat.
After dinner DW and I went out with the uv and thermal, looking for Hedgehogs and anything else. We did see something which was probable jirds but not much else.
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