The Indian Skimmer was a bird that I had not expected to get to see in state of Karnataka. It was definitely on my list of the must see birds in India. I had always thought that I would have had to make a trip to the river Chambal for it. But it held a different plan for me 🙂 .

I was out birding one morning with my friends at a lake in Bangalore hoping to sight the Grey-necked Bunting that had been reported a couple of days. As we were returning back to our cars at the end of the session, Rahul asked if I had heard of the sighting of an Indian Skimmer in Karnataka. I exclaimed “What!”. I was all ears 😀 . He said that he had seen reports of a sighting and was trying to get details of it. He would share the details once he had them.

The sighting had been from a place roughly 370 kms from Bangalore, in the backwaters of the mighty river Tungabhadra. Having got the details and arranged for the availability of the local forest guard who had reported it from there, Rahul and a couple of others decided to make the journey and try for it the very next day. By noon the following day, Rahul let me know that they had sighted it and that too quite easily. It had been seen perched on the river bank along with a bunch of River Terns and other birds. The forest guard had said that it seemed to be its usual pattern since the last several days he had been seeing it.

I could not travel during the week. So I was tense if the bird would still be around or would it disappear just as it had appeared 🙂 . Well, luck favours only those who try; we would have to try and hope for the best. Vignesh, Kumar and I decided to try our luck on the following Saturday. Since it would take 6 hours to reach the place, we decided to make inquiries with the forest guard before we departed. On Friday we had the forest guard check the “usual” patch of the backwater where it had been sighted the previous times. He replied that he had not been able to see it. My heart sank 😦 . We dropped our planned. Come Saturday evening I got to know that he had sighted it again, this time there had been two of them 😮 .

I had had a fall earlier in the morning from a chair and hit my head on the floor. Given that there was some pain I was in two minds as to go or not. I was hoping that no concussion had happened. The lure of possibly seeing an Indian Skimmer was too enticing. I decided to go. The plan was quickly finalised and we were all set. We had also arranged for the forest guard to meet us and take us to the patch.

We only had to reach there around noon. So we started from home at around 5:30am. We drove non stop except for a short break to grab breakfast. Our enthusiasm had us getting to the meeting point 30 minutes early. We did not want anything going wrong I guess 🙂 . He however could not take us to the patch straightaway as he was busy tending to some work given by his superiors. It was only after one hour that we started for the place. Finally!

I could feel the anticipation build up as we neared the patch. We parked the car and slowly walked towards the backwaters through some fields. The moment we were able to see the backwaters from a distance we peered through our binoculars. There were no birds that were sitting on the river bank unlike what Rahul had seen. But we could see a flock of birds perched on a rock in the river. Suddenly they all took flight; a Peregrine Falcon! If the birds all flew off further they could be anywhere!The backwaters is a very large area. Searching for it elsewhere other than in its usual patch, would be a herculean task. We anxiously scanned the birds in flight. “They are there!”, we exclaimed. There were two of them flying among the River Terns. We could see clear differences between them; their style of flying, their size and of course their unique beak,

Here are a couple of quick photos that I took of it flying lest it flew off far away 🙂 . It is the one in the centre.

Thankfully the birds decided to perch back on the rock in the river.

Here are couple of cropped closeups:

As we observed and talked about them, we saw the flock take to the wing again; this time an Eurasian Marsh Harrier! After flying for some time, they again landed back on the rock. This time I was able to get some photos of it landing:

We then decided to leave them alone and move on to explore other parts of the bank for a bit. We got some lovely views of a flock of Small Pratincoles, Glossy Ibises, Whiskered Terns, Asian Openbills and Pacific Golden-Plovers. Some time later we decided to start back as we had a long journey back home. As we walked towards our car, we noticed that the Indian Skimmer was lying down (so to say) on the rock. Here is a photo of that:

After admiring the bird some more through the binoculars, it was time to bid it goodbye.

The overall trip had taken us 15 hours. Many would call us mad to do such a trip for seeing a single bird. But birders can be mad. We were all happy that we had undertaken it to see the wonderful Indian Skimmers 😀

Video

Here is a short video that I put together of some clips I recorded during the visit. I have purposely replayed a few of them in slow motion to get a better view of the bird.