Sunday 6 November 2022
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| Brahminy Kite - Morjim estuary |
Day 1, continued ...
Having met up with our guide (Omkar Dharwadkar) at the Marinha Dourada hotel, we lost no time in setting out. Omkar had booked us a taxi and driver (Prakash) for the first four days of the trip. It was a short drive to our first destination – Morjim beach. This lies on the north side of the mouth of the Chapora River, which emerges into the Indian Ocean near the northern border of the small state of Goa. The beach is a well-known site for gulls and waders, but Omkar’s plan for the afternoon was a bit different. Leaving Prakash for the first of many snoozes, we boarded a boat that took us to a sandbar that had become exposed in the middle of the estuary.
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| Heading for the boats at Morjim beach. |
Omkar had warned us to wear sandals, so we had no problems wading from the boat. The first thing we noticed was that large areas of sand were covered, and I mean really covered, with tiny crabs. These were Sand Bubbler Crabs, which leave a mass of small sand balls behind on the surface when they filter the substrate for food. Despite their tiny size (~2cm diameter) they had no shortage of attitude, raising their claws in an attack posture when anyone got close before vanishing down the nearest burrow. There are several species of Sand Bubbler Crabs occupying two genera (Scopimera and Dotilla) in the family Dotillidae. The best fit for these ones is Dotilla myctiroides – which has been recorded on the coast of Goa and looks right for these, with a grey body and reddish legs.
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| Sand Bubbler Crab - Morjim estuary |
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| Tread carefully! |
The
crabs were also attracting the attention of a sub-adult Brahminy Kite. The juveniles of Brahminy and Black Kites are difficult to separate. In this case, the absence of light streaks on the breast points to Brahminy. There were a number of adults flying over the estuary (see photo at the start of this blog). These birds range from Pakistan eastwards to Australia. In Goa they were almost ubiquitous, although more common in coastal districts.
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| Brahminy Kite (sub adult) - Morjim estuary |
However,
we weren’t on the sandbar to look for crabs or kites. We had come to find waders, terns and ducks –
and there were plenty about. This was
the point in the trip where I felt the lack of a ‘scope most keenly, having left
mine in the UK in favour of the camera; lugging both around seemed too awkward,
which is a big advantage of my late lamented ‘point and shoot’ Canon Powershot. While I was able to get good views of
everything through Richard and Omkar’s optics, the birds were too far
away here for adequate photography. (So, apologies for the next few images!)
The birds of the sandbar and surrounding estuary were a mix of the familiar and the exotic. Common Sandpiper, Eurasian Curlew, Dunlin, Little Stint, Wigeon and Shoveler (the last two species forming an unsettled flock that repeatedly took off and landed on the far side of the estuary) were well known from home. But while two of the more common waders on the sandbar (Kentish Plover and Greater Sand Plover) had turned up on our previous European birding adventures, two more were new species: Terek Sandpiper and Lesser Sand Plover. The photo below of the Terek Sandpiper, one of a group of four, is pretty dismal, but it shows the key field marks of the long, upturned bill and the shortish yellow legs. This is a winter visitor to the shores of India, breeding mainly on the Russian taiga. Really nice to see. It’s named after the Terek River which flows through Chechnya into the Caspian Sea.
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| Terek Sandpiper (record pic) - Morjim estuary |
The sand plovers are tricky to identify. I saw both species through Omkar's ‘scope, but identification from photos after the trip was less straightforward - see the images below. Obviously, overall body size is an important feature, but this is hard to judge from a lone bird. Greater Sand Plover has longer legs with a pale, greenish tinge, as well as a squarer head profile and a larger eye. Lesser Sand Plover has much darker legs and a rounder head profile. Both sand plovers breed in central Asia and winter on the shores of the Indian Ocean, Indonesia and Australia. Lesser Sand Plover has a more easterly breeding range and is therefore a less common vagrant in the west than Greater – which I first saw in Cyprus. Compared with both sand plovers, Kentish Plover is smaller, showing a distinct white hind collar.
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| Greater Sand Plover (record pic) - Morjim estuary |
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| Lesser Sand Plover (record pic) - Morjim estuary |
Also
on and around the sandbar was a large flock of Brown-headed Gulls, told
from Black-headed by the black wing tips with small white ‘windows', as well as
Caspian, Lesser Crested, Great Crested and Gull-billed Terns. A Brahminy Kite (pictured at the start of this blog) gave us a close
fly-by. It was time to leave the
sandbar, so we boarded the boat for the short ride back to Morjim beach. Sheltering on the bank upstream from the
beach was our first Indian Pond Heron and a Striated
Heron.
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| Asian Green Bee-eater - Morjim beach |
Despite the gloomy skies there were still a few people on the sand, so birdwatching was confined to the trees and shrubs at the back of the beach. Top prize for the most attractive bird here went to the Asian Green Bee-eaters. These are delightful birds, either dotted around like exotic Christmas decorations or gliding lightly through the air in search of flying insects. They are very (very!) similar to the African Green Bee-eaters that I saw in the Gambia – from which they have been split; Asian seemed more common here than African were in the Gambia. Certainly, they appeared in a variety of habitats during our trip. The species’ global distribution ranges from Iran in the west to Vietnam in the east. Also present here were Greater Coucal, a common but skulking cuckoo, the bright and exotic Red-whiskered Bulbul, Ashy Drongo and Brown Shrike.
A rain shower arrived, the only one of the holiday, sending us back to Prakash’s taxi. But there was time to visit one more site for the day …
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| Siolim Fields wetland |
This was an area of wetland and paddyfields to the east of nearby Siolim village known generally as Siolim Fields. Birdwatching here was a perilous activity, as the site could only be viewed from a narrow and well trafficked road with very little dry ground on either side to act as a refuge from passing vehicles. Nevertheless, the first tropical wetland of the trip was a moment of great excitement. And despite the fading light, we were able to see a good number of birds. Best of these was the Bronze-winged Jacana, the first of my key target species for the trip.
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| Bronze-winged Jacana - Siolim Fields |
Jacanas are the quintessential birds of tropical wetlands, balancing their
massive feet on precarious lily pads. With
the Goa trip, which also provided a much poorer view of Pheasant-tailed Jacana
(see a later blog), I have now seen five of the world’s eight species. Bronze-winged Jacana has a
patchy distribution in the Indian subcontinent, south-east Asia and Indonesia. Although missing from much of north west and
peninsular India, it occupies the same western coastal strip as a number of
other birds that we saw on the trip - such as the Alexandrine Parakeet. In conservation terms, the IUCN ranks Bronze-winged Jacana as being of ‘least concern’ due to its extremely large range.
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| Indian Pond Heron - Siolim Fields |
An Indian Pond Heron flew past, revealing the sharp contrast between its usually well-camouflaged body and bright white wings. Indian Pond Herons are largely confined to the subcontinent, but their range extends to Myanmar. They are common residents of the wetlands and paddyfields of Goa.
As with the estuary at Morjim, the birds of Siolim Fields were a mixture of the familiar and the exotic. Giving a European flavour were Grey Heron, Purple Heron, Common Kingfisher (which is easily the commonest of the many kingfisher species that we saw in Goa), Purple Swamphen and Stonechat, while Pied Kingfisher and Little Swift were species that I had previously encountered in Africa.
However, five species were new for me: Stork-billed Kingfisher (perched on a wire), Long-tailed Shrike (sitting up nicely on a small bush), Little Cormorant, Western Spotted Dove (a useful split in the Checklist) and a pair of Black-rumped Flameback woodpeckers (on the trunk of a distant palm tree). I will return to most of these in later blog posts.
From Siolim Fields, Prakash drove us back to the hotel through the bustling and darkening streets. Cattle roamed randomly across the road. There were mopeds everywhere, pulling randomly into the traffic with horns hooting. It was a relief to reach the comparative tranquility of the Marinha Dourada. Although getting dark, we could still see the menacing shapes of huge fruit bats flapping slowly over the hotel’s ponds - these were Indian Flying Foxes. Back to Nick's Place for chicken tikka biryani, washed down with a couple of cooling beers, and then an early night.
To be continued ...
