Its a new passion. Bird spotting.

The Wagtails are back! It was last year's October when I spotted the wagtail for the first time. Wagtails migrate to the West Bengal and Orissa region in October. The most conspicuous habit of the wagtail is a near-constant tail wagging. Some studies suggest that the tail wagging  is a signal of vigilance to potential predators.  It has a distinct call of a  sharp ' chisick'. In urban areas the wagtails have adapted to foraging on paved areas such as car parks. They nest in crevices in stone walls and similar natural and man-made structures.  The white wagtail is the national bird of  Latvia  (a country in Northern Europe).

The trip to Sunderbans wasn't long. Just a night stay in a village cottage and then head back to Calcutta. The early morning ride in a ferry had me click a few shots of the birds.  The common sandpiper has grayish brown upper parts and wings, while the under parts are white. By nature they are very social and usually move around in flocks. They fly low over water and can forage on ground as well as on shallow water.  In winters, the sandpipers migrate from Europe and northern Asia to Africa, southern Asia and Australia. On the migration route, hundreds of birds gather in Micronesia for a stop-over.

The mangrove had this bird perched silently on a wooden pole in water. The adult has a purple-blue back, black head and shoulders, white neck collar and throat, and rufous underparts. The large bill and legs are bright red. They are mainly found in the mangroves.

A distinctive bird call from a tree drew my gaze towards it to see the bird. But as it was camouflaged among the leaves so well, it took me a long to time to fix my eye on this one.

While my visit to the Sunderbans, I spotted this bird in a paddy field of a village.  The common Kingfisher has blue upperparts, orange underparts and a long bill.   It feeds mainly on fish, caught by diving, and has special visual adaptions to enable it to see prey under water. The glossy white eggs are laid in a nest at the end of a burrow in a riverbank.

I was gazing out of the window of my drawing room when I noticed some white moving animal. At first I thought it must be the puppy that roams around the driveway all day. But then it struck me that this creature was much whiter than any puppy. I went outside to see it and I saw two white egrets or herons. The eastern great egret is a large heron with all-white plumage.  Its bill is yellow in the breeding season and black at other times, and its long legs are red or black. The Asian species can be distinguished from the Australian species by the size of their necks. The Australian species have necks almost one and half times as long as its own body.  These white herons live a few kilometers away from here. The Sunderbans. The last time I visited the Sunderbans there were flocks of white herons flying over the mangroves. These birds travelled from there in search for food.