Amazing Birds and Animals

Please name the three most amazing places in India for bird and animal watchers, and say why.

Ranganthittu (not sure about spelling) near Mysore for mig.birds.
Mindboggling.Check the season. Egrets,spoonbill,snakenecks... .all the folks are there!!

Ranganthittu- even better, very few of the binocular necked migratory primates!

Animals:

Bandhavgarh (tigers)
Nagarhole (elephants and bison)
Kaziranga (rhino)

but this leaves out Gir (lions) and the Desert National Park (wild ass) and several others where one can see animals endemic to the sub-continent.

Birds

Ranganathittu (for amazingly close-up views, NOTE, only during the season)
Bharatpur
The lower Western Ghats or the North-East of India for exotic birdlife.

Apana

Sorry, that was posted twice.

Apana

got charged by a bull elephant in Nagarhole last year. Although the driver dais it's not uncommon at all, it certainly made our day! That and the two baby elephants, "Mysore and Hyderabad" that stole our hearts.

Mostly places with a bias towards birds

Bharatpur
For sheer spectacle, variety and numbers of birds. Another plus is that you can wander freely around the reserve. Don't visit during a public holiday - very crowded and noisy.

Kaziranga NP, Assam
Plenty of wild animals including the Indian one-horned rhino, buffalo and elephants and a big variety of birds, many endemic to the North-East.

Any where near one of the National Parks in north India at the base of the Himalayas, like Corbett or Rajaji. As I like to be out on foot I find the parks too restrictive and anyway animals and birds don't recognise park limits.

One can watch wildlife at Sansad Bhavan, New Delhi, during question hour !!

Thank you to all of you for your comments ... I was wondering though, shat is "the season" that is good for birding in Ranganthittu?

The 'season' in Ranganathittu will start about now, the spoonbills had just started to arrive, but looked scruffy. The Painted storks, asian openbills, and ibis are yet to arrive. By the end of the month nesting activity should be on, so I'd say the season was between Jan to the end of the monsoon. Ideal months would be April, May, June, but everything depends on the monsoon. This year water levels are very low.

Apana

I found Ranganathittu a small deal. You have to rent a canoe with guide, which does not come too cheap, and the tour is all of 20 minutes and a quarter mile loop. You can pay more for a longer tour, but the whole thing looks like a zoo and not worth a big detour on your trip. It's pleasant, though, if you are already in the area. When I was there the tourists were mostly flirting young Indians who were barely looking at the birds. Certainly not Keoladeo Ghana, the one not-to-be-missed bird sanctuary of the five or so I've seen in India.

You can see big fruit bats, painted storks, spoonbills, open-billed storks, little cormorants, ibises, egrets, but not much else.

The water levels were very low in early 2003 and there were few birds anywhere. Ask a non-interested party before you go.

ok, here's my question:
Koldeo-Ghana, would rather wait till last week in Feb, but will be going nearby the first week in Feb. I visited in late March once, and most of the migratory birds were gone.

Are they still likely to be there at end of Feb???


Any Migratory birds out there lurking, pls Pls PM me- I have a Russian friend who can translate!

This famous sanctuary is very close to the town of Bharatpur, in south-east Rajastan. It is not too far from either Delhi,Agra or Jaipur and is practically en route between the latter two, making the Agra-Fatehpur Sikri - Bharatpur - Jaipur (or Ajmer/Pushkar) a very worthwhile road trip (in either direction, of course).

Keoladeo-Ghana is the name of the sanctuary more famously known as the Bharatpur bird sanctuary, located at Bharatpur, which is near Agra, Mathura and Bayana.

and Shimla- have you been to Bayana? Babur states it was the strongest fortress in Hindustan in his Baburnama, which is basically the main book we're using as guidebook. No one seems to have visited the fort there- Aur ab???