Birding at Valley School

Valley School - Bangalore a Paradise for Bird watchers

A 15-20 minutes drive early in the morning, brings you to a place filled with Tweets obviously not from Twitter but from Birds for real.

I must have visited this place several times and will keep visiting in the future as well, but every time there is something new on offer. 

Oh! by the way this the first time i am ever writing a blog on this so please do bear with my writing. There are many blogs which talk about valley school, and also the resident birds found in there, but i thought to contribute my bit to the community from where i have gained lot of knowledge.

To start with the location: Valley School

Direction: Head down straight from Banashankari Bus stand towards Kanapura, pass through KK cross, Talghatpura and you will come across Nice road Junction, drive straight for about 300 meters and take a right into a small approach road, head 2 Kms straight until you reach the gates of valley school.

Park your vehicle at the gate, no entry beyond this point and also NO ENTRY INTO THE SCHOOL, enter your details at the security and you are good to go.

Walk straight past the gates and head straight

The school boundary is protected by barb wires and do not enter there without permission, walk straight ahead along the road

 

Just to your left you find a big banyan tree rich with delicious fruits, which birds can't resist, you can find lots of Barbets, Minivets and even Flycatchers here, straight ahead you find two more banyan trees

You can spend good amount of time here to capture birds, all you need is keen set of eyes and some patience, from here you have two options

Trail 1: 

Follow the trail ahead towards West and reach an abandoned bungalow from here onwards the trail is very dense with lots of Nilgiri trees on your right, seems like footfall of Jungle.
Follow the foot trails next to the bungalow and head towards south a bit deep into the forest, you will find Asian paradise Flycatchers, sunbirds, Oriental white eyes, flame-back woodpeckers, Golden Orioles and of course the recently spotted Indian Pitta and lot of other varieties. There is also a huge lush green banyan tree with lots of surprises, this come on the way before you reach the bungalow

Trail 2:

Head north through the farm lands and you may encounter flocks of Indian Peafowls if you are there quite early in the morning, keep heading through the trail and you come across somethings which looks like a prehistoric construction, with broken walls of a territory, which I don't know was meant to keep out whom? Continue further you reach a small DAM and some abandoned building, here you find Spotted owls, lot of Egrets infact i was lucky to find Sirkeer Malkoha

 View of the Abandoned Bungalow from the DAM area, believe me its quite far, this was with full zoom with a 300 lens.

The list of Birds spotted are:

1. Laughing Dove
2. Rose Ringed Parakeet
3. Indian Roller
4. Green Bee eater
5. Jungle Babbler
6. Red vented Bulbull
7. White Bowed Wagtail
8. Indian Peafowl
9. Asian Koyal
10. Blue Bearded Bee eater
11. Oriental White Eye
12. Tickles Blue Fly catcher
13. Shikra
14. Grey Horn-Bill
15. Black Headed Golden Oriole
16. Golden Oriole
17. Greenish Warbler
18. Spotted Owl
19. White Cheeked Barbet
20. Coppersmith Barbet
21. Small Minivet
22. Jerdon’s Leaf bird
23. Red Wattled Lapwing
24. Brahmini Kite
25. Black Kite
26. Swallows
27. Red Whiskered BulBul
28. Sirkeer Malkoha
29. Asian Paradise Flycatcher
30. Indian Pitta

 And many other birds whose IDs I don't know, well in future i will upload the snaps of the beautiful birds. Happy Birding!!!