People and wildlife of Eastern Himalaya_My journey to some remote village_Batasia

[Samrat Sarkar]

The Red Crossbills are always very important to the bird watchers due to their peculiar and unusual shape of their beaks. the yellow-red bird in the picture is a male. The two mandibles are close X shaped. The beaks of the Red Crossbills have underwent this type of evolution so that they can easily eat their main staple food which is the fruits of the pine trees. They come to the reservoir five to six times a day to drink water. I was in a hurry to go for a trekking that day. So I decided that I would take pictures of their drinking water from the reservoir the next day.

Our trekking started from Batasia to Dhotre which is a small hilly settlement on the way towards Singalila and is about 2700 meters above MSL. The road is fairly good. But the sky was looking somber. The thick forest in the slopes of the hills on eitrher sides became almost invisible by the clouds and fogs. Still, in that dull background I could see a lot of birds. Rusty-flanked Treecreepers have grown and are flourishing in large tree trunks. I saw some Laughingthrushes in the dense undergrowth under the trees, but could not figure out which species of the Laughingthrush they were. There I saw some white Guras blooming in a tree in the slope of a hill. Some Yuhinas have thronged there with a lot of excitements. There was a Rusty-fronted Barwing in the bush. The last one kilometer stretch of the road towards Dhotre is fully through the Guras forest. It is time for the trees to shed their leaves. The floors of the forests are all covered with dry leaves.

We had tea in a small hotel at Dhotre and took some dry foods from there for ourselves. We became introduced with a local person who has opened a bird guide club with some of his other friends and has named their club as Guide & Porters Association.

We moved fast and were heading towards Tonglu from Dhotre which required a steep trek of about two kilometer. In those heights there were only forests of Guras and Bamboo thickets. It was a piercing cold weather with a gloomy sky. I came across a good many numbers of Leothrixes, Fulvettas and Minlas.

Chestnut-winged Minla or Bar-throated Siva