All the Malkohas of Indian Subcontinent…!
This is a short, exciting, frustrating and finally a very fulfilling story of about 400 days to find the 4 lovely Malkohas! The good thing of starting as a birder is that almost every bird is a “lifer” and makes you feel amazed at God’s (ok, evolution - for the science oriented ones!) creation. However I felt envy everytime I saw those Malkohas photos anywhere - those mesmerising eyes, those fulsome lips (beaks!), those colourful flowing gowns (tails) with impeccable natural patterns, the grace and the coy…
Naturally I harboured a secret desire to see them all soon. Little did I realise that the gap between desire and reality was so big! The first of the Malkohas was relatively easier for me and possibly created a false seductive illusion for me too in a way! As I went to find the last of my owls at Sinharaja forests in Sri Lanka, I chanced upon the Red-Faced Malkoha peeping from the densely wooded trees. One done and I thought will finish the others in 3 more months and then caption it “4 Malkohas in 4 Months”! Talk about grandeur and ignorant arrogance of a novice birder!
Sirkeer I thought should be easy to find in my own “backyard” of the Gurgaon Aravalli. It evaded me everytime for the 4-5 trips over many months I made to find it. Then I went to see leopards at Jhalana, and there by a water hole, arrived the Sirkeer late in evening when a leopard was moving around nearby. I had to sacrifice my leopard for the Sirkeer!
The Blue-Faced Malkoha I had heard was one of the most difficult ones and with no real “target” location to find it. However I narrowed it down to the city of Bangalore, the city of many “blue eyed” start ups too! After making several calls over several months, I found a friend of a friend willing to accompany me to Valley School area. We searched for it for a day and it showed no signs of its presence! I returned with a blue, dejected face. Only to return to Bangalore the next month. After another couple of hours early in the morning, the blue royalty, decided to parade itself on some bushes by the roadside!
Then was the Green-Billed Malkoha. It was a very shy one, I was aware. At Sunderbans, this time for the tigers, we saw it from afar while we navigated in the boat through the meandering delta. My guide was surprised that I asked him to follow it instead of moving towards the place where tigers were seen! There is a local saying we have “na ghar ka na ghaat ka” (meaning neither here nor there) and I didn’t see the tiger and managed to just get a photo of literally only the green bill, not the Green-Billed!
Then finally last week, fate did a re-run for me. At Kaziranga, we were tracking another tiger this time. I was not even aware about the presence of the Green-Billed at this forest. Suddenly it appeared on the trees by the dirt side road. Then another one appeared. Then they did some fantastic poses (will post later), then disappeared! Magic show over! The “cost of the ticket” was of course I did not see the tiger at Kaziranga again!
