An early morning trip to the Gopalakrishna Amanikere, Chikkaballapur

We went on our first formal bird count field trip in Chikkaballapur district on the 4th of May 2023. RK had selected Amani Gopal Krishna Kere as the first location of study, based on his observations, on the way to the farm, on the types of habitats found there. He felt that a lake that had wetlands, water and trees would likely have a very rich diversity of birds. Weirdly enough, the lake does not show up on Google maps:

The map above shows Chikkaballapur's most famous lake (Kandavara, on the left), but not this one. The lake does show up if you switch to Google Earth view though. And we found the name of the lake from this article describing the encroachment of the Dept of Horticulture's Glass House on its buffer zone.

We reached the lake around 6-ish in the morning a place called Bannikuppe, the sky mildly cloudy but bright, parked the car by the side of the highway and strode over to the opposite side. Our bird-watching session commenced at 6:30am. The area opposite the highway had trees and tall shrubs with water-logged soil. In a small puddle between some shrubs, two spot billed ducks paddled while a sandpiper pecked busily nearby and an ashy prinia sat on a tree branch and chirped out. A coel streaked past, and a flock of glossy ibis flew above us.

Across the highway, on the side abutting the lake, is a vast hyacinth field and wetland before the lake is seen.

On this stretch, which felt less wet and quite solid, were grazing flocks of glossy ibis and cattle egret close to the highway, and a little farther afield, purple moorhen abounded.

There was a bush and gulmohar tree packed with what I think are crickets. Standing by this bush, one could almost feel the air around reverberate with their stridulating calls. On the lake, hundreds of coots or dabchicks were sitting motionless, soaking in the gentle morning warmth. Stately grey herons and a darter stood by and cormorants flew past.

In all, we observed 3 distinct sub ecosystems around the lake: 

 a) The soggy grounded section on the side of the highway opposite the lake. This section, clearly connected to the lake, separated not only by the highway, but also by its nature: supporting larger shrubs and trees which bore birds like coels and prinias, but also supported water birds like spot-billed ducks. 

 b) The grazing wetland/ hyacinth field: a vast stretch of cyclically wet and dry land with many opportunities for grazing, nesting, hiding etc. This sub eco-system (would I be correct in calling this a sub-biome?) supported grazing flocks- glossy ibis, moorhens, waterhens, egrets 

 c) The lake itself: the lake held birds that like to flock together, like coots and dabchicks, or that prefer "parallel play", like herons- which tend to be more solitary, but are present as part of larger group of co-migrating flocks. 

 Here are the final counts along with my comments. 

 Sub-ecosystem 1: Counted between 6:30am to 6:40am 

Spot billed ducks: 2 to 5 

Glossy Ibis: in flight, multiple V's of about 10-15 in each V. 

 Ashy prinia: 2 

 Sandpiper: 2 

Coel: 1 

 White breasted waterhens: 3 

Purple moorhen: 1 

 Red wattled lapwing: 2 (in flight) 

Large cormorant: 1 (in flight) 

Sub-ecosystem 2: Counted between 6:45am to 6:55am 

Pond herons: 2 (this bird is seen wherever there's a bit of water...) 

Cattle egrets: 8, mostly male 

Glossy ibis: On land, at least about 30 to 40 

Purple moorhens: 20-30 

Grey herons: 7-8 

 Sub-ecosystem 3: counted between 7-7:10am  

Dabchicks/coots: hundreds 

Herons: many 

Here is the eBird checklist for the day.

 Birdwatching ended at 7:10am. 

 It was a beautiful start to the day. I could have never imagined, driving past, that there could be such richness of life in that area! As we walked back to the car, a rose ringed parakeet shrieked goodbye and our old friend, the ashy prinia, hopped into view to bid us to return :) 

 In another post, I will go into a bit more detail into some specific birds and my learnings on the same.