Goa – Birding on the River Zuari

Posted by Shreeram on Sep 29, 2011 in Blog, Uncategorized | 7 comments

River Zuari is the largest river in Goa. It originates in the Western Ghats and flows into the Arabian Sea near Vasco, covering a distance of 34km. We set off one November morning from the harbor at Cortalim looking for birds along this river.

Our first encounter was with the Greater Crested Terns resting upon wooden logs in the harbor. They seemed to consider humans as friends here and were not too perturbed by our presence. The other “regulars” here, the White-bellied Sea-eagles were missing in action that day.

An Osprey, however, seemed to take offense at our presence. It seemed to be getting used to his winter home after a long migration.

A Grey Heron peeked at us from its roost.

There are at least 6 species of Kingfishers that can be seen on this river cruise. We bumped into our first one very soon. This Common Kingfisher seemed to be busy searching for breakfast.

Pied Kingfishers were seen often. And so were White-breasted Kingfishers . We saw one gulping down a huge frog some distance away. This one posed for us beautifully.

The massive beak of this Stork-billed Kingfisher seems to have been quite well-used.

The very (contrastingly) colorful Black-capped Kingfisher is a treat to watch, especially when it flies. It seems like an array of colors zipping by. This one gave us a couple of seconds before flying away.

A lifer for me on this trip was the Collared Kingfisher. This bird is generally found in coastal areas, primarily mangroves, and is distributed widely across Asia. The vidali subspecies is found in Goa. We found the bird in pairs on all the 3 occasion we sighted them.

This Striated Heron (or Little Heron) gave us a very queer look as we passed by.

In addition to these, we also saw Great Egrets, Intermediate Egrets, Black-crowned Night Herons, Whimbrels (flying by), Wire-tailed Swallows and a huge flock of ducks flying in the distance. As we headed back to the harbor after an awesome morning of birding, the Eurasian Golden Orioles kept moving along the tree-tops and calling as they had been all morning.