WILD ODISHA #2 : BHITARKANIKA
Bhitarkanika, basically an Odia name meaning a jewel hidden from outside world. It is a very special and protected biodiversity eco-system which serves a plenty of wildlife species and supports livelihood of local people by Widllife Ecotourism. It was the winters of 2019 when I planned for a new kind of birding trip as well as a whole new habitat for me to explore for next 2 days.
Bhitarkanika is a unique habitat of Mangrove Forests criss-crossed with numerous creeks and mud flats located in Kendrapara district of Orissa. One of the largest Mangrove Eco systems in India, Bhitarkanika is home to diverse flora and fauna. The unique bio-diversity attracts visitors to the nature’s lap.
My tour was taken care by the brilliant duo of father-son, Bijoykumar Das and Binod Das (Bijoy’s Son). They can make the best of your birding time here at the mangroves, they manage your sanctuary permits, boating permits and most skillful boatmen for both morning and evening session. I was staying at their resort at Dangamal, which is about 15 minutes from Rajkanika jetty.
The birding started immediately as I reached around 6 in the morning, without halt we headed towards the Khola gate part of sanctuary. Binod greeted us and was assigned as naturalist for my trip. Binod showed me the commoners like Night Herons, Waders and Darters etc. Khola part was a protected heronry where lot of species have nested, and they do so every year.
After this, We encountered our very first Kingfisher, BROWN WINGED KINGFISHER
This was a pretty bold bird, it was my lifer so I just fired away lots of shots, minutes later fog made it difficult to photograph, so we headed towards the next part. This was an opening and sunlight was harsh here, I saw many kingfishers in flight including the Pied KF, and the Black capped KF.
I had seen Black capped KF few years back at Somnath, Gujarat, but couldn’t manage a good shot, so I told our boatmen to focus on that bird for today. After an hour of searching, there was not even a single bird around us. Suddenly, I sighted my lifer…GREEN BILLED MALKOHA camouflaged perfectly in foliage
After this, we saw one Black capped KF perched on a very beautiful perch with a green background. Light was too harsh, but managed a few closeup pictures and got my wish fullfilled.
We ended up at a dead end, as the channel ahead of us was restricted by Forest Department. We turned back again and did a repeat of the whole stretch, and got to see this beautiful WHITE BELLIED SEA EAGLE, one of my wish list raptor species which I photographed nice and up-close that morning.
It was finally noon and time for lunch, we had a great time enjoying local seafood that day, rested till 3pm and started birding in Dangamal part of sanctuary, this is place where one could book and stay at Odisha Forest Department FRH and be with nature 24x7
This place had a jetty, from where we started the final session of day, the tide was really low this time and everything was visible clearly, the scenario was completely opposite of high tide morning session. Low tide is best as per our naturalist, this is most active time for kingfishers and this is the time when they hunt more, giving photographers’ easy approach via boat that too pretty close.
This session was just for the remaining one, COLLARED KINGFISHER !
As I told the boatmen to slow down, we observed few kingfishers on a single dry tree, believe me or not, all the kingfishers were on it altogether and were hunting ! My lens was way to zoomed in and we were close enough, so missed that interesting frame. But got closeups of this beauty !
And made lot of upclose pictures of Brown winged KF in proper light
We saw several waders this time, as their food was exposed due to low tide. Species I observed and recorded were Terek Sandpiper, Marsh Sandpiper, Green Sandpiper, Whimbrel, Curlew Sandpipers, etc.
In the process, got lucky with an extremely close encounter with the most common species here, the PIED KINGFISHER !
Met my special friend again, this time made a few different images.
Not to mention lots of close encounters with the Saltwater Crocodiles, they were everywhere literally ! I would have never believed that they can be so large if I haven’t seen one few feets away
We even saw few crocodile hatchlings, very young ones swimming or either sun basking.
I wished that I could see the MANGROVE PITTA but my guides told me its too early to sight one, March-April is perfect to see one as they’re too common to observe in sanctuary. Never had I dreamt to see one few metres away from a boat in its perfect mangrove habitat. As our naturalist Binod suddenly exclaimed…
“Pitta !….we found it !”, it was only a 10 seconds show and it bounced off inside of mangrove forests. But I made my dream frame in those few seconds with correct settings which I doubted because everything happened in an instant !
This happened to be their very own sighting of the season, everyone was happy and we returned towards our home-stay to have some nice dinner and rest well for the next day’s forest birding (on foot finally !)
It was evening and I met Bijoy ji, and we discussed our bumper sighting of Mangrove Pitta, later on, he told me a lot about this place and some intersting sightings over the years.
I requested him show me one of my favorite subjects, Owls ! We went into the forests of Dangamal, he told me that this place has possiblity of Leopard Cats in summers too. It was already 7pm, and after few minutes inside the trail, we were surrounded by calls of various owls and nightjars. We located a few which were nearby and used torch to find a few ORIENTAL SCOPS-OWL
This was an amazing experience, as always night owling is my favourite
Next day, morning 6am we entered the Dangamal Forest Trail for some birding. I saw some reeds and wetland plants, so asked my naturalist what species to expect here, and then we tried for those species for around 3 hours and got them all photographed, some were really shy and some came only in low light areas.
We advanced on the trail and ended up a point where a huge Water Monitor Lizards was blocking our path, I slowly approached this lizard and got some photos and then backed off to take another route. This area had a lot of birds, we got PIN-STRIPPED TIT-BABBLERS group in a bush, we waited very closely and got some amazing shots of this shy and fast bird.
Returned back to swamp area, and did some birding in proper light and that’s when I also observed two woodpecker species, different from each other cross me and started pecking on nearby trees.
Finally, a last goodbye to my Spotted Owlet friend, and it was time to return !
I highly recommend this place to every nature lover !!
Thank You for reading !
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