Bithi Agrawal, seen here with one of her school’s buses

who runs the two

Foundation Schools in Whitefield and Gunjur

called me up, and as part of her dream to educate the children “outside the box”, asked me if I could take the children on a birding/nature walk at

Kaikondranahalli Kere (Lake)

on the 10th of September, 20016.

This being one of the activities I love, I agreed eagerly, and found that the school has just over a hundred children!

I immediately pressed my friends into action and it was the six of us

L to R, Hariharan IS, Chandu Bandi, his son Krishna Virat, Aravind A M, Janhvi Vyas, and Rishov Biswas, who took the chattering band of children (there were about 80, plus 6 teachers to keep them in some semblance of order!) on the path around the lake. It was very kind of my friends to volunteer, as they always do!

We sighted a fair amount of birds, because the waterfowl are generally to be found at the lake all day, and we did have good sightings of the woodland birds, too, in the bushes around the banks. You can see the eBird list for the morning here I could not concentrate on the bird photography, obviously, but here are a few birds we saw: The BLACK DRONGO : SMALL GREEN BEE-EATERS : SPOT-BILLED PELICAN : BRAHMINY KITE (this one's not fully grown yet) Nor were birds the only interesting things that we saw. Here are some "six-footers"! This is a tiny Parnara Swift : An equally tiny DARK GRASS BLUE : This Dragonly is called the COMMON PICTURE-WING : a GREAT EGGFLY : These are part of what I call "Life Under Foot" which is, often, life under an inch in size! We saw several interesting forms of plant life, too. Small wildflowers like this ALDER Here's a tree with beautiful star-shaped seed pods: Jungli Jilebi often used as a substitute for tamarind: Some of the children did a great job of keeping bird lists, a good field-trip activity: The children all stopped at the restroom area for their snack: Here's Rishov, pointing out a bird to the children, while Bith seems impressed by the dedication of my friends: Bithi (on the right in this photo) organized a lot of things, including having the restrooms opened up for the children. </lj-text> She also treated us to a great breakfast at Murugan Iddli Shop Here's a big thank you to Bithi, the children of the Foundation School, and my birding friends, for a very enjoyable morning!