Birding ! Driving ! Soul-searching !: Bird Photography at Barrackpore, West Bengal

Once you step foot in the eastern region of the country, things are not what they seem elsewhere. The entire Gangetic delta plain in so fertile, you can see green everywhere, with small ponds and water bodies all across. This makes the place so rich in avian population, that you can spend a couple of hours on the terrace and you will end up getting beautiful shots of birds without much effort. The number of species are more, the number of individuals in all those species is also more, their activity is so high that you can possibly get all the prefect angles in the perfect lighting. And most of all, if you are lucky to have an access to a terrace that is at a third or fourth floor, then you are in for a treat.

3rd and 4th floor terrace gives you just the perfect height to reach the top level for most of the trees. You are just at the right level with the tree canopies, giving you mostly eye-level shots of birds, which you won't get if you are standing at ground level or any level higher than 3rd or 4th.

Incidentally, this time I realized that my relatives' house both in Santoshpur and Barrackpore were 3 floor houses. Gives me an ideal spot from the terrace to click the birds every morning. So, for 20 days this turned out to be my routine every morning. Get up in the morning, have your breakfast and spend 2 hours on the terrace. And would you believe the quality of the photographs that I managed to click? Yes, I agree some of these shots were one-timer lucky, but most of the birds gave me multiple chances to click on multiple occasions. I could literally pick and choose which photos I wanted to keep and which one to discard.

Finally here are the pics that I managed to get in a single morning session of 2 hours on a terrace of Barrackpore. This guy came for a second and just gave me only a fraction of a second to click. But got a good shot nevertheless.

Purple Sunbird male

Didn't see the whiskered one in Santoshpur, but here in Barrackpore, whiskered was more in population than the red-vented one.

Red-whiskered Bulbul

Common Tailorbird

For the first time, I managed to click the female and the male on the same tree in the same frame.

Asian Koel female and male

Jungle Babbler

Yellow-footed Green Pigeon

Purple Sunbird female

Some pics below from my trip in November-2015.

Bird watching in Bengal has its own sweet meaning. A place like Barrackpore gave me an opportunity to click some species which I can never even think of near my home in Hyderabad.

I could hear the call of Blue-throated Barbet from the terrace of my stay location in Ichapur and Barrackpore. What a beautiful place is that in terms of bird watching. Fertile land, green surroundings, small ponds everywhere and beautiful birds all around.

I had a short trip to Jawahar Kunj, Gandhi Ghat, Barrackpore to look out for the scarlet-backed flowerpecker. But i found my lifer Blue-throated Barbet instead.