BT Wild ART - A unique Journey to the wilderness: Awesome Ajmer

Lovely readers yet another week and I am ready with something different. Last week could not post the story because I was traveling to find some exceptional stuff for my blog family members. I am very sure that this trip report will help you to understand that our country is so rich with natural beauties but are unexplored because of lack of awareness. So now its time to explore the birding expertise of Ajmer.

The Trip Report

Mumbai Travelers keep me updated with various under-explored places that are healthy with natural beauty to help me with some extraordinary stuff. Again, this time Saurabh/Jogi informed me about the qualities of Ajmer, knowing the information I could not stop myself from visiting this place. This time Prathamesh was captain of the trip along with four travelers including me, Chaitanya Sir with his son Eshaan (expert in the making) and Esmail Sir. The high five 😊 nature lovers started from Dadar to experience one of the best places for birding.

The main attraction of the place is Lesser Florican (will explain qualities in the next section) because of it’s an outstanding habit. We all were excited to capture the bird as soon as possible and hence started the session immediately on reaching the place. The sighting started with Large Gray babbler and slowly it reached the target place. The first session was satisfactory as we got a glimpse of Florican along with some unexpected surprise like Red Sand Boa Snake, Red-Necked Falcon.

Due to previous day surprises, the expectations or you can say greed increased 😜 for the next session. We started a bit early so as we can get sufficient time to enjoy the Florican activities. As we all believe and respect the nature it rewarded us with two hands. The sighting of Florican was unmatched and was 10 times more than our expectations.

The day also offered, a close encounter with a huge Eagle Owl up close in front of the car, Common Hawk Cuckoo, Eurasian Hoopoe, Green Bee Eater, Blue-cheeked bee-eater, and a lot of other beautiful birds. We all were feeling out of the world and super lucky to get more than 50 varieties and hence celebration was a must. We explored the local market to celebrate our sightings, local food such as Kadhi Kachori, Jalebi, Samosa, Ghee aloo-tiki and PAAN made the trip even more memorable.

The success of the trip depends on the experience with nature and its beauty hence I would like to share the same in a separate section. Please check out some excellent sighing details in the next section.

The exceptional experience

Flawless Florican

Let me start with the main attraction of the trip, Lesser Florican a unique bird but unfortunately part of the endangered list. it is best known for the leaping breeding displays made by the males during the Monsoon season. Our target was to capture jumps made by this lovely bird to attract the female.

On the first day, we saw hardly a couple of jumps but on next day it jumped for more than 40 times. It is said that with jump it creates sound to attract the female, the jump count may cross 300 to 400 in a day. isn’t it unbelievable! It is completely different pattern compared to other birds; you can actually experience the same from the DSLR section. I will share complete details on Florican with the separate blog.

Red Sand Boa

Biggest surprise of the trip was Red Sand Boa snake, we found it on the open road where it was trying to cross the road. The snake is known for many superstitious beliefs attributed to it because of its double-headed appearance, such as bringing good luck, curing AIDS, etc. Such blind faith has resulted in endangering the species, and in illegal trade

Eagle Owl

Another rare bird, this deserves the place in exceptional sighting because this was the closest sighting of Eagle Owl till date. On the second day, we came across this lovely bird, shocked with such a close open sighting though it was on alert mode and took a flight immediately, the glimpse of it made us crazy with its beauty, only real eyes can enjoy such beauty.

Red-necked Falcon

Similar to Eagle-owl this beautiful bird of prey was sitting very close to the road, the moment we realize its presence it took a flight to find a distance from us, the beautiful colors mesmerized us and made us crazy as well.

Common Hawk Cuckoo

Popularly known as “Brain Fever” because of its screaming call sounds like word brain fever, with its sound you can easily detect its presence but it is very difficult to spot the same hence it is part of our exceptional sighting list

Long List

Apart from the above, the sighting list includes, Red Sand Boa, Rain Quail, Rock Bush Quail, Savana Nightjar, Francolin, Green Bee-eater, Blue-cheeked bee-eater, Indian roller, Eurasian roller, Indian Thick-Knee, Ashy-crowned Sparrow-Lark, Rufous-fronted Prinia, Indian Peafowl, Glossy Ibis and many more.

I hope you loved the details of these rare birds; we should explore such wonderful places to learn about conservation of our mother nature.

Request you to share your feedback on btwildart@gmail.com, it will help me to improve the deliverables

Vote of Thanks: The blog cannot end without a vote of thanks, the contribution of each one is crucial, without which the journey is incomplete

Trip Captain – Prathamesh Desai your birding expertise and experience of rescue center is just amazing, thanks for all the arrangements and memorable trip

As always, Lovely Co-Travelers

Ajmer specialist - Rathorji, Kalyan (his son) and driver

Stay & food - Neelkamal and Sheesh Mahal

Ajmer local food & Panwala – local food was out of the world

A Message of the Day –

God loved the birds and created trees, humans loved the birds and created cages. Don’t Cage birds, let them enjoy sky

BT Wild Art

Deadly DSLR