Pity about the pitta - non-birding by spotlight and playback

A slightly depressing evening today, and one that I didn't really want to happen. I'm genuinely not interested in ticking off all of the Western Ghat endemics and I don't need to see every bird that Thattekad  has to offer. What I want to do is go birding at Thattekad with a guide and see what we see and not worry about what we don't see, but unfortunately ticking as many Indian species as possible seems to be so engrained with all of the guides here that it's very difficult for them to break out of that mode.

So today we ended up joining other groups of birders at dusk and trying to coax out owls and nightjars with playback, and then search for them with spotlights. It's not just the tactics used to see the birds that I don't like, I also don't want to be with groups of other British or European birders making idle chit chat.

 

Anyway, as dusk approached I was about 20m  away from the pack trying to keep myself to myself when I miraculously spotted an Indian pitta in the undergrowth. Well deserved I felt because I was the only person birding apart from the guides and I wasn't even sure about them most of the time, they all appeared to be just waiting for it to go dark. This was my first ever pitta, I missed them in  Australia so I was pretty chuffed to say the least and it was a decent view in the fading light. But now what to do? Do I tell the others and invite a mad dash over to me no doubt scaring away the pitta, or do I keep it to myself. I decided, I beckoned them over and said "pitta". As expected a mad dash ensued and the first person there shone a spotlight in the area and the bird vanished never to be seen again. Great. I was sorry I'd told them. Still, for me at least it was a fabulous sighting, a long dreamed of bird.

Later, after we had spent an hour playing owl calls at full volume to no avail, and shining spotlights all over the trees, a spot-bellied eagle owl finally gave itself up. Obviously a smart looking bird, but it left a bad taste and I wasn't sure that it was worth it. 

Finally we headed over to a place for Jerdon's nightjar. By design I was again on the edge of the group when a guide walked past me and shone his torch into a bush and right onto a nightjar. I was first there but the crowd soon caught up and hustled and pushed their way past me, some standing in front of me blocking my view. No thanks that's not for me, I'd sooner not see the bird. I moved away and left them to it.

I'm only at the end of day two of six, yet already I'm finding Thattekad a depressing experience. That's not a reflection on the place which is rich in birdlife and nor is it a reflection on my guide who seems to be one of the best and much respected by the other guides, it's plain and simple a reflection on their cliental.  From what I have seen and been told, the guides here have had their expectations of their cliental forged by years of guiding people who only want to photograph and tick the bird and then forget it and move onto the next species. Ironically these people would probably not call themselves twitchers, they're either photographers (with no binoculars) or elderly and relatively wealthy Europeans who are "seeing India" and who have little or no idea about the birds they are seeing or thirdly, European birders who have come to India "to see 400 species" and don't care about the tactics used, they just want "birds for their bucks".  The attitude of the latter group is "for this to be a successful holiday I must get to 400 species because that was the challenge I set myself before I left home". Well, each to their own, but that's not the experience of India that I want.

The problem is, these people instil an attitude into the guides which means that once a bird is seen the focus rapidly moves to something else, and a long hoped for dream bird such as the pitta is forgotten almost as soon as it is seen in the desperation to move onto the next species. I could have watched the pitta for an hour on my own but I'm not given the opportunity. I have seen nothing here to make me change my opinion that birding alone is the best way to bird, even if it means missing out on species, at least I can enjoy what I'm seeing.

After tonight's experience I've told Vinod straight, I'm not interested in looking for any more owls or nightjars during my stay here and I don't want to chase endemics at the expense of everything else. I couldn't care less if that means that in all probability I'll leave without seeing some of the endemics, I thought I made it clear already that I'm not chasing them anyway. 

It was a shame that it ended this way, before the crowds arrived and the pitta incident, I'd also managed to find an Indian roller and a southern coucal for myself, all star birds in my opinion and exactly why I wanted to come here in the first place.