They want to be Salim Ali

The Cloud 9 Nature Club took its second step last Sunday. It was raining since the morning and I was mentally resigned to the fact that we will not be able to go out. As I was about to doze off at 4 PM in front of the TV, the phone rang. It was Aahan. Hello uncle! we are ready and we are coming ... but its raining I said .. no it has stopped he insisted ... Well! Let's go then but what if it comes again .. we are coming with umbrellas uncle ... and they came with bags, chips, juice and umbrellas. All 3 of them... Aahan, Aryan and Sarthak. So we started, Mimansa too came with us and lo behold there was this rainbow out there to greet us.

I assigned the boys some roles this time. Aahan was going to take notes, Aryan was going to be the observer and Sarthak was going to be navigator. To begin with we watched sun birds and priniyas in the bushes behind our houses on the track leading to the club house. It was drizzling and operating the camera safely was cumbersome. The drizzle stopped though by the time we reached the club house. Mimansa decided she will walk back as we were headed to the forest, she did not know we were carrying chips.

However the boys were excited, their idea was to head straight to the jungle. Well I knew from past experience that the club house area itself had to lot to offer. I was not going to be disappointed. The boys gave me a great pose just before beginning the work.

Our first target was a wild tree that bears lot of berries and therefore is very popular with birds. We found a small greenish bird that was hard to keep track of. With great difficulty and help of Aahan I was able get a good picture. It was a Greenish Warbler, a small bird.

Suddenly Aahan got excited and exclaimed .. New bird! New bird! .. and lo behold there was a White Chested Kingfisher sitting on the lawn tennis court's fence. I tried to get closer for a better picture but it gave me a slip. It was going to give us few more slips in next few hours. 

The lawn tennis court has a part of forest looking over it from one end and the bee-eaters were busy catching bees by swooping down into the clearing provided by the tennis court. We spotted as many as 4  bee-eaters.

We left the club house and headed to the woods to try and find the Kingfisher, as we were trying to locate the Kingfisher, a very sweet call echoed and I ran towards it trying to calm down Aryan who was excited more about the Lays chips that he planned to sit down to finish. I had never heard a Kingfisher and the call was too interesting to ignore for the chips. We crossed into a densely wooded area and the call went again. It was a bird somewhat smaller than a crow, brown in color with white spots all across the body. After capturing few pictures, we all sat down in a clearing and enjoyed our chips. I took the time to browse through the book and identify the bird. It was the Asian Koel .. now I knew why the call was so sweet. This was a female, the male is about the same size but black in color.

This was yet another very satisfying trip, I told the boys that now you will start spotting birds everywhere subconsciously which has been now confirmed by Sarthak. I told them I plan to take them to Pune university which is famous for its flora and is known to harbour lot of birds. I also told the boys that I am 33 and I am starting now while they are just 7-8 so if they keep on going they have a chance to go very far. Can we become Salim Ali ..? came the question. Yes why not... yes absolutely, I replied and I realized ... Yes they can become Salim Ali :). Next destination Pune university .. with my Salim Alis.