As usual, by consensus, Nandi Hills was agreed upon as the destination for Saturday’s birding trip, and 7 of us….Kannan,Nandan, Naveen,Poornima, Santosh,Sumeet, and I…left very early in the morning, so as to catch the sunrise at Nandi Hills.

As it happened, we caught the beautiful “moon set” instead. The moon was just a day past full, and still looked quite gorgeous as it sank down in the west, behind the bettA (hill) that is Nandi.

By the time we’d queued up for our tickets, and got into the road, and gone up the hill and parked…the sun was well on its way over the horizon, and the sunrise was a thing of the past.

I’ve posted a short account of the day on my Facebook album,

click here for it

but let me share with you the highlight of the day…a

BLUE-CAPPED ROCK THRUSH

that sat still for us after leading us a merry chase through the slopes, as if to reward us for our efforts!

Here he (it’s a he) is, giving us a side profile, too:

Another view:

We saw a lot of

GREENISH LEAF WARBLERS

which are migrants from far away:

Another lovely bird we sighted was the

ASIAN PARADISE FLYCATCHER

first, we saw the lady:

And then we saw a blur of movement:

That was the male! After chasing him all over the place, we finally got a couple of seconds to get a shot:

For some reason, I am unable to post any more photos to my Photobucket account, so I’m afraid you’ll have to go to my Facebook album to see the other pictures…but we had a very enjoyable day, and I am looking forward to the next weekend, when we will take the monthly third Sunday trail, somewhere in the Bannerghatta forest area.