Identifying Birds
Recently I went over to the Strand Book stall’s 60th Anniversary sale which is on till Dec 28th. There was a decent collection of books (though not more than the typical 20% discount). Among the books I bought was ‘The book of Indian Birds’ by Salim Ali. This book brought back fond memories of my childhood. My parents were members of BNHS (Bombay Natural History Society) and regularly took me out to talks and slideshows (Salim Ali was associated with BNHS for a longtime). It is a nice guidebook with lots of interesting information though by no means exhaustive.It contains informative entries on more than 500 birds found on the Indian Subcontinent. I used it to identify the Small Bee-eater in Udaipur and the River Tern near Bhadra Dam in Chikamagalur.
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I took this picture at the Maharana Pratap Memorial (Moti Magri) overlooking the Fateh Sagar Lake in Udaipur. The Small Bee-eater (Merops Orientalis) is distinguished by Reddish Brown head and neck and it’s tails fears which prolong into blunt pins. You can see the Bee-eater actually has a bee in it’s beak. It found all throughout the Indian Subcontinent.
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The River Tern (Sterna Albifrons) can be distinguished by it’s yellow beak and black cape and is a noisy and a gregarious bird. It is found all round the Indian Subcontinent (except Sri Lanka) and usually seen near river banks and lakes. This picture was taken near the Bhadra Dam (We stayed in the nice Jungle Lodges log huts nearby).
The pictures have been crossposted to my Photoblog
A great post and wonderful pictures..at Jungle lodges, we have just started a blog to build a community of wildlife enthusiasts..we would be happy to have our guests contributing..from photographs to experiences..we would be very happy if you did..you could mail us at junglelodgesandresorts@gmail.com and visit us at http://junglelodges.blogspot.com
Good stuff! Your river tern in flight is quite nice. The Bee-eaters now that you know them are actually visible all over the place. The book you have is excellent.
I gave up doing birding reports and delegated this to Jyoti (http://jdesignlab.com/category/bird-watching)
Cheers…Kishore
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PS: forgot to mention the books we use:
A Field Guide to the Bird Of India – Krys Kazmierczak
We do have a few more books, eg. A Photographic Guide to the Birds of India by Bikram Grewal and then a host of others, a special one on Kingfishers, one on Raptors etc. But we find the field guide the best along with the Salim Ali book that you have.
Here’s a good place for the right books:
http://www.kolkatabirds.com/bookreview.htm
Hope this helps you along your birding interests.
Cheers…Kishore
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@jungle lodges Thanks for the apprieciation. Will contact you soon.
@kishore Thanks for the help. Will check out the other books as well.
Hi Vinayak,
Kishore’s led me to your blog, and with your budding interest in birdwatching and confirmed interest in photography–former of interest to me and latter to Kishore–I’d keep an eye on your posts from now on
Would like to add the following two resources to your list to skim: the first gives helpful reviews of the most usable bird books and the second is a great online database of bird photos.
http://toroid.org/ams/bird-books
http://orientalbirdimages.org/search.php?keyword=bee-eater
And, while I’ve been pouring over the books by Salim Ali and Kazmierczak, I notice that Small bee-eaters are now called Green bee-eaters, and the scientific name for River Tern is Sterna aurantia. Sterna albifrons is shown as Little Tern that is considerably smaller than River Tern.
cheers, Jyoti