Yewoor Dec 2006 visit : Myself and Harish decided to visit Yewoor this morning and he came down to pick me up in his car at around 6.30 am. I had my Nikon D50 with the regular lenses that I use and harish had carried his camera along with his 2.2x Raynox Converter and went on a birding trip.

Reached Yewoor before sunrise and it was quite chilly and also quite misty with dew falling from trees like rain. We went along the trail and were a bit disappointed with no birds in sight, maybe they all took a longer nap because of the cold... went half way up the trail and found a few psyche and bush brown butterflies biding their time for the sun to rise and warm their bodies into activity

Further down the sunbirds started showing up with quite many on the treetops just as the sun began to warm up the weather. Then came the drongos with their screeches and a few petronias. We reached the river bed, quite disappointed but also a bit heartened due to the good pics of the psyche and bush brown that we had shot. Then came the burst of activity.....the sun was quite up as it was already around 8.45 am and was heating up the surrounding fast.

The purple sunbirds showed up in pairs along with a huge flock of c.s. petronias flocking in a bare tree and chirping away. Then came the bulbuls and the black drongos flying around the silk cotton trees and the bright red blooms, sipping the nectar from them. Also saw a lone racket-tailed drongo dragging its rackets behind in flight.

We decided to spend some more time in that place and were rewarded with spiders and dragonflies, trying to dry off the dew that had settled on them during the early morning and shining in full glory in rainbow colours. The return trip, however threw up lots of pleasant surprises. A third down the trail the very familiar churk churk of the paradise flycatcher kept distracting my attention but could not sight it. Suddenly we saw a flock of around a dozen eurasian golden orioles hunting party along with some drongos, a few gold fronted leaf birds and the quaker babblers. Didnt know where to look and what to shoot in that mellee but got some very good shots of the oriole and some record shots of the leafbird. Harish suddenly saw a stump move among the trees and was lucky to get a picture of the spotted owlet, which promptly disappeared from view.

This flurry of activity completely made us oblivious of the magnificent male paradise flycatcher flitting around much lower in the same area and we suddenly caught sight of it. However, being quite wary and shy the bird promptly disappeared into the canopy but we still could hear it call from the stream's edge for a long time. After spending much time enjoying this sight and getting as many pics as we could, we just moved ahead and harish suddenly froze and turned around. We had, without knowing, missed a coiled snake right in our path, sunning itself. It went into the thicket as fast as it could and we were lucky not to have stepped on it, This snake needs to be identified...was dark brown in colour, around 2 feet long and around 3-4 inches in diameter and had light brown line running all through its body on both its sides. From the looks of it, was a non poisonous one.

The sun had gone up quite a bit now and it was very warm and the sailers, wanderers, pansies and other butterflies were quite active and very much around. Some like the wanderer, the plum judy, the pioneer and the lemon pansy gave us quite a display and some sat quite patiently till we got some good macro shots of them.

Overall quite a good trip and we both enjoyed it thoroughly and would like to repeat again on the lookout for more surprises in the months to come.

Ravi