European Roller

Posted by Shreeram on Oct 20, 2011 in Blog, Uncategorized | 6 comments

A break between 2 trips to Ladakh gave me the opportunity to visit Tal Chapar (yet again ) for a couple of days this July. Being summer, I hardly anticipated any lifers. As we drove into the park, the first thing I noticed was that the rollers were all-blue in color. Mr.S.S.Poonia (Range Forest Officer at Tal Chapar) had kept a surprise handy. European Roller – a bird that I’d missed over the past 2 years.

While the Indian Roller is fairly common, it’s cousin – European Roller (Coracias garrulus) – is a passage migrant; it visits us around monsoons on the way to southern Africa from its home in Eurasia. The bird is very slender compared to the Indian Roller and the blue is unmistakable. The behavior of the bird is also very similar – it was most often seen on top of the shrubs and dry trees, scanning around for food.

The European Roller is a Near Threatened bird. The European population has seen a moderate decrease over the past couple of decades. In India, the bird is best seen from July to September in North and North-west India. There’ve been records from South India too (this year from Bangalore outskirts).

About the Indian Roller: The beautiful Indian Roller (Coracias benghalensis) is a regular sight, perched on electric lines or the tops of trees, as one drives through the open country in peninsular India. The magnificent colors of the bird have kept me entranced whenever the bird takes off. No wonder it is the state bird of 4 states in India.

Well, the Indian Roller has a subspecies that looks very different too. More on that later