We were on the return leg of our journey of birding around Sela Pass. Before heading back to the hotel in Dirang Valley, we decided to do some birding around Sangti Valley. This post is what we saw while doing so.
One bird that I was hoping to see there was the Long-billed Plover. Rahul had been to Sangti Valley the previous year during Dec on a family trip. At that time he had also got to the see the Black-necked Crane. Being able to see that would be hoping against hope I guess 😀 . Well, only time would tell 🙂 .
The drive to Sangti Valley was beautiful as the road went besides the river. We finally went through a village. It was spring and almost all houses had pots kept out with lots of flowering plants. They were really pretty to see.
As we drove past the village house and reached an open patch besides the road, a bird perched on a fallen tree branch caught out attention; a raptor. It turned out to be a Himalayan Buzzard.
The patch that we were seeing it also happened to be the one in which Rahul had seen a couple of Black-necked Cranes in Dec. Well, they were no longer there as expected. Shankar finally took the dirt road and parked near the river. We got out and birded on foot. This meant scanning the river bank on both sides.
There were both the White-capped Redstart and the Plumbeous Redstart.
The most common birds around were the Red-vented Bulbuls and Eurasian Tree Sparrows. Scanning the other bank had us seeing two White Wagtails and a few White-browed Wagtails. There was still no sign of the Long-billed Plover even though we quite a length of this section of the river bank 😦 . May be it was because there was a group of people who had come to do some team-building activity. The banks were green and with plenty of fresh flowers around.
We went back to the car to try at a section before the village. For this we traced our way back on the route we had come. This time we stopped at a section before the village and then walked down some steep steps to reach the river bank. We soon started scanning the bank again. Dombe called out a bit later. It was the Long-billed Plover! Light was poor and the camera was struggling to focus on the bird. Here are some poor shots of it.
It merged so well with the background. If one were to take eyes of it for a few seconds, it was an effort to trace back where it was, especially if it had moved 🙂 . Having seen the main target, we decided to take in the views a bit more. We lay down on the grass for some time.
Having got our hearts fill of seeing the bird, we decided to move one and try for other birds. We drove a bit and stopped at a patch that looked promising. A stroll around had us seeing a Little Bunting perched on a tree.
A tree besides that also had a male Crested Bunting perched on it.
We also saw a Warbler that was actively going around the tree. We suspect it was a Buff-throated Warbler.
Light was falling pretty fast and the bird activity had also come down. Well, we said goodbye to Sangti Valley and headed back to our hotel in Dirang Valley.
Video
Here is a short video of going around the place.
Want to read about birding at our next destination? Read about it in Birding Around Mandala.
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