gryllosblog   Gryllo's (aka Ian Lewis') blog. All things to do with travel, wildlife especially birds, history, architecture and anything else that interests me.

We had three nights at this very attractive hotel. We checked in during the afternoon and had time to spend a couple of hours in DNP before dark.

Much of the DNP is what you would expect, that is desert; either low desert scrub, arid grassland or, in a few places, bare sand dunes.

However there seems to be very little control over the use of the park and a large proportion has been taken over by pastoralists or is used for agriculture. The most famous inhabitant of the park is the Great Indian Bustard, a bird that once occurred over much of peninsular India but is now down to a few hundred individuals, mainly in DNP (plus one site in Gujarat where breeding has not been recorded for decades).

If any Great Indian Bustards attempt to leave the Park they will be in trouble, on one side is the Pakistan border where they are likely to be shot for sport and the other three sides are ringed with up to a thousand wind turbines and associated electric pylons, a death trap for a large, heavy flying bustard.

Another rare inhabitant of DNP is Stoliczka’s Bush-chat which we saw very well.

Naturally we saw many open country birds including flocks of Black-crowned Sparrow-larks ….

…. and the much larger Bimaculated Lark, which is showing its maculations off rather nicely in this pose. By far the commonest lark was Greater Short-toed Lark which occurred in the flocks numbering in the thousands but all remained distant and unapproachable.

Pipits were represented by the more familiar Tawny Pipit and somewhat similar Long-billed Pipit (above).

Isabelline Wheatears were if not common, at least regular. This species differs from the female of our familiar Northern Wheatear by its larger size, more upright stance, larger amount of black in the tail and the wing coverts concolourous with the mantle making the alula appear more obvious. Although I have seen many Isabellines wintering or on passage in Africa, the Middle East and South Asia and breeding in Central Asia I have always dipped when attempting to twitch vagrants in the UK.

Desert Wheatears were commoner than  Isabellines and although this shot is not as sharp as I would like, it does show off the ID features quite well, including the all black tail.

Most shrikes were Southern Greys (race laharota) ….

…. but we also saw a number of ‘isabelline’ shrikes. It is claimed that the word isabelline, referring to a pale yellow-brown or creamy-brown colour arises from a vow that Isabella of Castille made in 1491 to not change her clothes until the (eight-month) siege of Grenada was accomplished. Isabelline Shrikes are usually split into two species but the vernacular names are somewhat confusing. I prefer to call the more westerly phoenicuroides Turkestan Shrike and the easterly isabellinus Daurian Shrike (above) and use the name Isabelline just for the combined species. Bizarrely it is the more easterly taxon that occurs as a vagrant to Europe. Phoenicuroides winters mainly in Africa, isabellinus in the Middle East and India

There were quite a few raptors in the park, including this Lagger Falcon ….

…. Long-legged Buzzard (here a pale morph individual) ….

…. the little Shrika, a species of sparrowhawk ….

…. and the huge Cinereous Vulture. Often described as a flying barn door, this impressive bird is often called Black Vulture in the UK but this invites confusion with the well-known and ubiquitous Black Vulture of the New World. Cinereous, meaning ash-grey, isn’t strictly correct, they are more of a dark brownish-grey colour but it is a lot better than the dreadful ‘Monk Vulture’ that was proposed by ‘Dr Shamrock’ a decade or so ago. Cinereous Vultures are one of the biggest of the Old World raptors.

Other birds seen included White-eared Bulbul which is slowly spreading westwards into the Western Palaearctic ….

…. and after much searching and at the 11th hour, a group of Cream-coloured Coursers.

But in spite of much searching it seemed like the only Great Indian Bustard we were going to see was the giant model outside the park HQ. I was in the lucky position of having seen the species well in 1986, a time when they were much commoner, but to the rest of the group this was the raison d’être of the trip. we later found out that a rival tour group had to extend their time at DNP to three days in order to find any, something that would have annoyed me as it would have meant dipping elsewhere.

Mid afternoon we had a lucky break, a local birder had found a group quite some distance from where we we searching. We got there as soon as we could but the heat haze was dreadful and the birds just walked away if we tried to approach any closer. We had acceptable views of nine females, but as you can see no quality photographs.

As a result I have posted this excellent photo from the Internet Bird Collection (taken in Gujarat the only other area to have any remaining Great Indian Bustards) by Arpit Deomurari.

The following morning we visited the neighbouring Fossil Wood Park. The structures in the photo are shelters protecting fossilised tree trunks dating from the Jurassic period, 180-130 mya.

Unfortunately in an attempt to protect them from theft or vandalism the fossil trunks are enclosed in wire cages.

Of course we were here for the birding and as the fossil wood was on rocky slopes we saw a number of species that were absent (or harder to see) in DNP, including Desert Lark – a bird that occurs as multiple subspecies, each one with plumage exactly matching the base colour of its desert habitat.

We had excellent views of ‘red-tailed wheatear’. Like Isabelline Shrike this has been recently split into two species, the westerly xanthopyrmna Kurdish Wheatear and this one, chrysopygia which sometimes retains the combined name of Red-tailed Wheatear, but I prefer the vernacular name of Persian Wheatear as it immediately identifies which is the western and which is the eastern species.

We also had some good views of Chestnut-bellied Sandgrouse making good use of what little shade was on offer.

As we returned to Jaisalmer we could see the ancient fort, one of the largest fortifications in the world, rising above the plain.

We had a tour around the ancient town during the hot part of the day near the ‘Bloody Good View’ hotel ….

…. made our way past the shop selling ‘child’ beer (? chilled beer) ….

…. and made our way to the ancient citadel that dominates Jaisalmer.

Built in 1156 but damaged and rebuilt many times during its turbulent history, the fort consists of three massive concentric walls.

This young girl was showing off her acrobatic skills for the tourists.

Then we entered the ancient, narrow, medieval streets of the old town.

There were more cows and dogs in the road than vehicles ….

…. and some cows had learnt that they could go from house to house in the hope of some spare chapatis.

These ancient merchants houses or havelis have incredible stone carved facades, this one took 50 years to complete  ….

Jaisalmer grew rich on the taxes imposed on passing caravans during the spice trade and this shows in the wonderful buildings …..

I took loads of photos of these architectural wonders but can only room to show a few here.

Say no more!

So I’ll end this post on the Desert National Park with a desert sunset.