Indian Bird Videos

Sirkeer Malkoha or Sirkeer Cuckoo

Sexual Dimorphism in Birds - Male Vs Female In general Sexual Dimorphism is an interesting phenomenon but in birds its visibly delightful factor. The males are usually brighter and bigger than the females. But there are few exceptions like Painted Snipe where the females are bigger and colorful. In Birds of prey, the females are always larger as they catches the prey for their chicks. In few birds like minivets both the sexes are equally colorful. People who don't have any knowledge about birds usually think these birds as different species.  Let us start by having a look at our common backyard bird. In the case of Asian Koel ,  the male is glossy black and female is dark brown with white spots. Sexual dimorphism in ducks is very common. In Northern Pintail, the male is more striking.A thin white stripe runs from the back of chocolate-color head.  The female plumage is more subtle.  For Pied bush chat males are black with a white vent and a white wing patch. Females are dark brown

Yellow-Wattled Lapwing Yellow-wattled lapwing is a ground bird which can be seen in open grassland. They are silent compared to the Red-wattled lapwing. When in danger , their behaviour is similar to Red-wattled with high shrieks and circling above the enemy. They protect their chicks by standing on guard in all the corners. The chicks start foraging immediately after hatching from the eggs.  During our birding, there was not a single day we had missed seeing the watchful Red-wattled Lapwing.  But I Saw my first Yellow-wattled lapwing only after I started serious birding. We saw them in Chennai and initially we spotted only one. We were happy with our sighting but soon we started seeing the lapwings standing here and there. They look very colourful with their yellow wattle but they merge well with the surrounding. पीला टीटहरि is the common name for this lapwing in Hindi. They are endemic to Indian Subcontinent. They do local migration based on the monsoon. They nest on the ground and i

Common Urban Birds Some birds are very specific about the terrain they live like the shore birds or hornbills. But few birds are very adaptable and they have started to live with us in urban environment like the rock pigeons. Mynas, crows use the urban setup efficiently and their population is exploding while birds that are very specific to their diet and terrain are deteriorating in alarming speed. Sunbirds, flowerpeckers are so tiny and their requirements are very limited, so they can be seen both in garden and jungle. Black kites who have started scavenging the garbage pile-up areas can be often seen circling on the sky even above a busy road. I have seen mynas using the traffic lights boxes as their nest box, rose-ringed parakeets using the holes on tunnels and spotted owlets on any abandoned building sites. Even though there are numerous birds in urban setup, most people don't recognise the birds except for crows and mynas. So we decided to take video of our urban avian neigh

Indian Birds Sounds - Part 1 Hearing birds sound is a luxury nowadays. With all the noise pollution in the modern world, hearing birds sounds is not easy. Birds are active at dawn and dusk, so we can get up to birds chirping and enjoy twilight hearing their chatty sounds if we are in the right place. In the modern world, most of us are in concrete jungle. So except for crows, mynas and pigeons its tough to see other birds. Still if you have planted even a neem tree or Bougainvillea, you will start seeing Asian Koel, Southern Coucal, Sunbirds and the chatty babblers. Unless you are a birder or the one who notices the surroundings keenly, these birds can be heard but not spotted. So to help the people who would love to hear birds sound at their own comfort and to identify the source of the bird sound, we started taking sounds of birds. It was really very interesting to see the birds when they were communicating. Some are dedicated singers, few are non-stop chatters , few are singing for

White rumped shama singing it's song One of the reasons we moved from pictures to videos was that of sound. While still images captured the bird in vivid details the moving images showed a lot more about their behavior. One of the beat aspects that came out of recording video was that of their sound. While we have heard recordings of bird calls separately, seeing them and hearing them at the same time was a special experience. The expressions of the bird that came all along with the call was a refreshing visual. They often performed small dances with their calls and it was quite entertaining. With this new found visual aspect we started recording all the bird calls we could find. After going after the common and not so common birds for the sounds , one bird that was still missing was the White Rumped Shama. As a bird of dense forested areas,  finding shama was in itself a tough task. As we had set our hopes on recording their song the searches were turning out to be futile for a wh

Dancing Peacocks Peafowls are the most beautiful birds in the world. I don't think there can even be an argument in that area. The only way somebody can ignore the beauty of a peacock is because they are used to it so much that they loose that exotic nature to it. Well we do not suffer from that lag. We are rather feeling the awesomeness grow with us every day. When we moved to our new place, these magnificent ones became our neighbours. One thing people don't know about peafowls is that they are very voiceferous. They start 3.00 in the night and are pretty much regular all through the day with their calls.   With them being our noisy neighbours it was hard for us to ignore them. With the monsoon starting,  the peacocks were also dancing regularly. Sometimes we just sit and marvel at their beauty.  We decided to do this video about the typical day in the life of a peacock because we wanted to show how different life could be. No complications. Just eating dancing and flirting.

Water Birds in India Water birds are birds that live in water. The aquatic habitats could either be fresh water or marine. These birds rely on the water body for their food. These water habitats can be reservoir, marshes, ponds, lakes etc. Based on the different type of habitats and their preferred prey the birds get adapted accordingly. Aquatic habitats are often rich in food sources as water is the cradle of life. From fish to frogs, snakes to eels anything that fits the mouth of a bird is prey. Small waders like plovers go behind worms , insects which are abundant in tidal mudflats.  The water birds in Tidal mudflats are mostly the shore birds , herons and kingfishers. The Tidal mudflats are exposed during the low tide and many invertebrates are left behind from ocean. So the birds use that time to feed their food. Western Reef Egret, Dunlin, Spotted Redshank, Eurasian Oyster Catcher, Lesser Sand Plover, Great Thick Knee, Eurasian Curlew, Ruff, Common Green Shank, Black-tailed Godwi

Short-eared Owl Owls are our favorites ! We are so crazy about owls that we have named our blog as roamingowls . When we were in US we had spotted the long eared owl as well as the great horned owl as part of our wishlist. In India too we had a wishlist and one owl that eluded us was the Short eared Owl. We searched for it for a long time but never got lucky. There were some who offered us to show it but we resisted as we wanted the search that comes with birding. We always take pride in the fact that the birds we find are all spotted by us. Only in places where the forest department mandates that we have a guide do we engage people. Even with the guide we do all searching ourselves. So when we finally found our cute one sitting on the ground hiding among the bushes, it was pure elation.  The golden sunlight of the setting sun just added to the mystical experience we had.

Barbets of India Barbets are unique tropical birds. The bristles around their beaks show them apart. While physical characteristics are vivid to see , for us Barbets are synonymous with the sound of forest. The constant call of Barbets fills the Indian jungles and in our case our home too. The brown headed Barbet was one of the first birds we had the opportunity to closely watch. We have a sandalwood tree in our home and the fruits are a bird magnet. The not so easily observed brown headed Barbet spends most of time there. We can get to a few feet of him and he doesn't bother. This kind of kick started our birding journey and our interest in bird sounds as well. Now with more roaming we are able watch and film all the Barbets in India except one. The above video is a compilation of those Barbet moments. 

Parrots of India Parrots of India video is to show about the 12 species of parrot species found in India. All the parrots found in India are green in color. They are usually seen in small flocks and they live in tree holes. As they are very communal, they chat constantly. So you can hear the parrots in jungle even if you cannot spot them immediately. The Vernal hanging parrot is the smallest and Alexandrine parakeet is the largest in India. It's sad to know one third of this species are in endangered status because of heavy poaching for pet trades and habitat loss. Few parrot species like Rose-ringed parakeet got adapted to modern civilization , so they even live in the holes in buildings. The Nicobar parakeet who needs dense forest couldn't cope up with the fast changes current world is going through.                           Our personal experiences in seeing each of these parrot species are very memorable ones. Rose-ringed parakeet is the common parrot species in India , so