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| Black-breasted Parrotbill Paradoxornis flavirostris
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| Photographer : | © Pritam Baruah |
| Location : | Dibru Saikhowa National Park, Assam, India |
| Date : |
24 December 2008 |
| English synonyms: | Black breasted Parrotbill, Black-throated Parrotbill, Gould's Parrotbill, Yellow-billed Parrotbill |
| Bird Family : | Timaliidae - Babblers, Babaxes, Mesia, Leiothrix, Cutias, Barwings, Minlas, Fulvettas, Crociases, Sibias, Yuhinas, Myzornis, Parrotbills & Rhabdornises |
| Bird Group : | PASSERIFORMES |
| Red Data Status : | Vulnerable |
| Remarks : | This was the top bird from my three weeks of birding in North East India. Visuals of this bird eluded me for four years. In the past, I clearly heard the bird many times but much to my dismay, never got to see it. We rode out on a country boat to a small island that was completely covered by dense mixed grass and positioned ourselves at an area that was trampled over by wild elephants. It offered about 10 meters of visibility. This time we had come prepared (sort of) and we tried luring the birds using a horribly recorded song clip that we had obtained earlier. It was a recording in which the loud noise of a mechanised boat on the Brahmaputra, was far more prominent then the bird calls. Actually, I was afraid the recording would terrify these skittish birds instead of inviting them.
Fortunately, the birds responded almost immediately and all of a sudden my world lit up. Now all I had to do was wait for them to climb up the reeds! But ten minutes went by and the birds still didnt bother to show up. And as more time elapsed, I slowly sensed a sinking feeling deep in my stomach - it was deja vu all over again!
However, I was not about to give up and using sign language, I clearly indicated to the other person that he should replay the recording. I watched him fiddle around with his ancient CD player but even after a minute, I couldnt hear any playback! And then the moment of horror - he looked up, contorted his face and started wildly jesticulating. It could mean only one thing - the batteries had run out on us after just 20 seconds of CD playback. I couldnt believe our sour luck. Lesson learnt - do not ever carry Novino Gold "Heavy Duty" branded batteries in the field.
But even as all hopes were fading fast, I struck upon an idea - I desperately whipped out my Nokia N95 (which I think is an immensely useful gadget for field trips) and turned on its voice recorder, knowing fully well that it wasnt particularly good at recording distant ambient sound. I recorded whatever I could - half expecting it to be garbled noise, crossed my fingers and played it back. And then, what we heard shocked everyone - a clear, crisp and loud 'tweet tweet tweet tweet tweet' emanated from the phone. For a split second, all three of us stared at each other open mouthed and then quickly turned our sights towards the dense clumps of phragmite reeds in crazed anticipation. The rest was a blissful blurry dream.
The silence was only momentary. More then 10 of these strikingly beautiful and severely endangered babblers burst out of the reeds and noisily started circling around us - almost in a cacophony. We were literally surrounded by them and we didnt know which way provided the best view - it was quite superb in all directions. They were jet fast and skulking as ever but they were so near and so many that we got splendid views for over 20 minutes. And when we finally decided to leave, the birds decided not to leave us. They followed us invisibly but noisily through the reeds for another five minutes or so. It was almost as if they graciously saw us off at the door. - PB |
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