January 2021 was off to a great start as far as new birds for me were concerned. It started with the sighting of the Indian Skimmer. Read my post about it here. Then I heard about the news of another lifer; the Red-throated Pipit.

The Red-throated Pipit was another bird that I had tried to sight a few times in the past years. Well, I was certainly going to try again 🙂 . The first attempt with a set of friends on a sunny morning did not turn fruitful. However that trip yielded some fantastic views of an Eastern Orphean Warbler and an Eurasian Wryneck.

We were not going to give up that easily. We went again a few days later. Again it was nowhere to be sighted inspite of a long search. We were starting to head back to the car when it was eventually heard in flight and seen landing. Finally! We spend the next 30 minutes getting excellent views of it. I had not taken by camera. So photos from then 🙂 .

A couple of days later, news of another visitor came, a jackpot; a Jack Snipe! Given the rare chance of sighting this one, we decided to try the very next day. It was to be an afternoon session. The sightings of the first rarity in the visit were the Red-throated Pipits. This time we sighted four of them. Again, they gave us great views.

Here are some photos of the Red-throated Pipit that I took during the afternoon visit:

As we waded through the grass near the water, a snipe got flushed and took off. Snap, snap! A couple of photos taken revealed it to be a Common Snipe. Now things were beginning to get exciting. It was not soon after that we flushed another one. This time it turned out to be a Greater Painted-Snipe. Were we not going to see the Jack Snipe?

We slowly walked along the grass patch near the water. Whoosh! Another snipe got flushed. This time we were certain that it was different. It had been smaller than a Common Snipe and Pintail Snipe. This was turning out to be promising. The bird had flushed and flew to the other bank of the water stream. Here is us contemplating whether to cross over or not (picture courtesy Rahul)

There was nothing that was going to deter us from taking a closer look. We literally walked right into the water and crossed over.

The bird was really good in hiding. But we had an idea where it had landed. We approached it slowly, trying to get glimpses of it every other step. It finally decided to take off again. This time it flew far off. But we managed to take a few shots. Jack Snipe indeed!

Here are a couple of shots of the Jack Snipe that I got to click when it was in flight.

The photos are not clear but I am still super happy. Getting to see and photograph the Jack Snipe has been a very please surprise indeed! January and 2021 so far was turning out to be one with Surprise Galore 😀 !

Here are the happy faces of birders when they see a Jack Snipe (picture courtesy Rahul) 😀 :

Here is how our legs look from the “crossing over”; again picture courtesy Rahul 😀 :

Video

Here is a short video that I took of the Red-throated Pipit as it went about foraging.