Today, 2nd October 2019
It’s Gandhi Jayanthi, A national Holiday, I don’t want to sit simply at home, so I decided to go for bird watching.
Last day me and my friend Hananeel Sandhi were discussing about this lake near Sulur and wanted to visit this place.
I told my father, that we are going there today and asked him would you like to come, so you can walk for sometime and see some interesting birds. He was so excited and joined with me.
We started at 7:40 am from home and reached Sulur around 8:30 am. I called Hananeel and asked for the route and also to check whether he is ready for the walk. He told us to go to the spot and he will join us in another 10 minutes.
We reached achankulam, parked our car under a tree and waited for Hananeel to arrive. I heared lots of bird sounds. I got excited and started to look for them. I went to edge of the lake shore and saw a flock of Eurasian Coot swimming, Grey heron diving, Little egret walking on the other side of the shore.
Suddenly I heard a sound of a small bird. A purple sun bird, flying around an electric post. I took my camera started taking photos. These sunbirds are so fast and small, I hardly took four to five shots and it flew.
We where looking at the coots for sometime and far away, on the other end of the lake, we saw a large flock of white birds flying, my father got extremely excited and he wanted to go there in the car. It was too far and we don’t know where or how exactly to reach that flock. It was like some alien nano particles, trying to become one in the mid air, such long distance it was.
Later, two random people came in two wheelers and stood by us (they were the local people).
I saw a canal on the other side of the shore and I wanted go there.
I asked them how can I go there?
They replied, why are you doing this photography?
I told them I am doing this as a hobby,
They told us to go to the temple, on the way we came and from there we can climb to the top of the shore and then we can cross the canal.
When we started moving, a Black Kite came flying out of nowhere, so close to water trying to hunt, I stopped again tried to take some shots. But it went high in the air, with in a second.
I saw another big bird flying in our direction, It was a Spot-billed Pelican, took few shots and then we moved to the temple.
Soon we were at the temple gate and finally Hananeel arrived. All three of us went inside the temple compound. There was a huge banyan tree, where we found Parakeets, Mynas and Black Drongo.
We walked along the lake shore and reached the canal. Me and Hananeel crossed the canal by walking over the support beam which was broad enough to walk comfortably. Once you reach the other side of the canal there was no clear path, small shrubs and bushes covers all the land.
We were in the shaded part of the land and suddenly we saw something running on the pathway. It stopped running and when we move, it started running again.
What was it bro? Hananeel asked.
I said, I guess it is a lapwing. We couldn’t find it later when we moved.
We went little further ahead, but it was almost 9:30 am and sun was too hot, couldn’t find much birds. But we saw lots of butterflies. On our way back we saw two different birds flying, one was, yellow ocher in color ( may be the lapwing ) and other was a kingfisher, A Common kingfisher, on contrary to its name, its not easy to find them. We were lucky enough to see one.
We crossed the canal bridge, joined with my father after 20 minutes. He was standing there admiring the butterflies, he was happy and said there were almost 30 different colors of butterflies. He was looking at them like a kid.
We went back to the temple and saw few student from reputed college volunteered for cleaning the temple area, from plastic waste. We met a government official who encouraged us for bird watching and said, lots of birds visit this lake and they are trying to maintain a better environment for them.
We met another lady who is a local, came to know we were doing bird photography and told us nearly 81 different birds can be seen near the lake. Professional photographers from various clubs, visit the lake for bird watching. Lots of migrating birds visits every year. She took my number and asked for photographs.
On our way back to the car I saw the Red-wattled Lapwing and took few clicks.
It was around 10:30 am we said good bye to Hananeel and started from the lake, we stopped at aavin, had a glass of cova milk and reached home at 12:15 pm.
The photos which I took were not so great but the experience was. Will definitely visit the lake very soon again with my father and my buddy Hananeel Sandhi.
The winter is coming !!!
A few clicks from the visit.
We were there for almost two hours and this will be one of the most cherishable memories of my life.
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