Eaglenest, May 2009
A follow-up trip I returned to Eaglenest for the Hodgson’s Frogmouth after it was heard/spotted by Shashank Dalvi immediately post my March trip. Needless to say, it was a spectacular discovery for the country. The bird has very few records for the country mainly from Namdapha.
Since the monsoon was just breaking, I thought I will find time for a short 5-day trip for the Hodgson’s Frogmouth and combine it with any opportunistic shooting. We found the Hodgson’s Frogmouth the hard way after spending hours in a very treacherous slope and finally spotted the bird late in the evening in a bamboo clump. The slope was so steep to navigate that I couldn’t bring my 500mm lens down and had to settle for the much lighter 400mm DO lens.
Shashank and our ace spotter Khandu held me on the slope so I could click without falling! An interesting fact is that all the birds spotted in Eaglenest so far seems to have the brown plumage indicative of the female (like the one photographed). In addition to the Hodgson’s Frogmouth, I was lucky to get several p-lifers which I have uploaded in this trip report — scimitar babblers, wren babblers, cutias, bush warblers, laughing thrushes and the Black-tailed Crake. I also got my first decent Bugun Liocichla images. It rained heavily and we roughly got about half of the five days to search for birds. While it was frustrating, the times the rain stopped was magical! Overall, an extremely productive trip. Enjoy the images!
Cheers, -r-
