OUR BEACH BREAK TURNS INTO A BIRD RACE

Discovering a unique corner of India’s Arabian Coastline

It had been two months in the high Himalaya dealing with icy winds, layers of thermals and down, and scanning the rocky treeless slopes for signs of the wildlfie. The piercing sun was relentless. Ladakh is one place where one part of your body can be frost-bitten while the other half is getting sun burnt. The hard work did pay off with lots of exciting birds and mammals including multiple encounters with the snow leopards, wolves and even the Pallas’s cats of the area. But long periods in such conditions can make one yearn for a break among the calm of familiarity; simple things like trees, warmth; maybe even just seeing one’s own skin.

My partner Faiza and I decided that its time for a break. A friend of ours recommended this nice little nook of private coastline with pristine beaches and a small cottage along the Arabian Sea. We booked ourselves there without second thought and looked forward to some quiet time among waves and cold beverages. No ‘Wildlife-ing’ of any sorts was the deal. What happened when we reached there was a very different story!

After a three hour drive, our cab driver turned west on a dirt track leading away from the highway and we knew the coast couldn’t be far now. The drive took us through small fragment forests and villages surrounded by large cashew groves. Eventually the road opened up to a wide Laterite Plateau, a unique rocky micro-habitat of the Western Ghats known for its thin layer of top soil, sparse vegetation and surprisingly, an explosion of endemic lifeforms during the Monsoon. The rocky track seemed to lead nowhere till we reached the end of the Plateau… and the land just dropped. Standing at the edge, we could see densely forested slopes and cliffs giving way to a sandy beaches and the vast expanse of water beyond - like in the wallpapers and postcards. It was exactly what we wished for while freezing in Ladakh.

We walked down the trail through the forest, crossed two picture perfect beaches before reaching the cottage that was tucked away among rocks and forest. The sun was just above the horizon line as we walked in, lighting up the entire western coastline. We felt like explorers, all alone, walking down the beautiful sandy beach that we had just to ourselves. A short dip in the warm waters, a few cold beers, a local meal and we passed out. It had been a long day of transfers over the Himalaya and most of the Indian subcontinent to reach the coast.

We were up and about early thanks to our years of being wildlife guides. The familiar morning tune of the Malabar whistling thrush was ignored by us. We wore the beachwear that we had picked up en-route and headed towards the beach. The plan was to swim for a few hours and work up an appetite for a heavy brunch. Just as we were approaching the water’s edge Faiza noticed a bright blue blob on top of a rock. On closer look we saw that it was a black-capped kingfisher. This is a bird I had seen in forest streams among Kipling’s Central Indian jungles and occasionally in Mangroves of the eastern coast. It was not a bird I had expected to see by the beach. We noticed that the bird was preying on fish stranded in small tidal pools and the plethora of crabs that crawled along the rock surfaces. It was a long debate as we watched this precision hunter go about its business. Should we go back to get our binoculars and camera or ignore the temptation! Obviously we chose the former. Next thing, we both were crouching behind a rock, still in our beachwear, but with binoculars around our necks and camera slung on one side. While watching the kingfisher we noticed reef egrets, pond and striated herons, a female blue rock thrush and a large flock of sand plovers chasing the waves for food along with a lone common sandpiper. It was like we were forcing ourselves to be blind to this diversity all this while. This was us in our element- this is what familiarity meant to us.

Watching our antics of the morning, the caretaker of the cottage, who had quite clearly not seen anything of that sort before, walked up to us and mentioned about a large eagle that wakes him up with its scream every morning. He told us about a spot between the forest and the beach where this happens. We decided to hike to that spot after lunch, only this time clad in olives and other jungle apparel. Walking through the forest path we noticed a whole lot of birds that surprised us. In all our focus on the beach, we forgot that this slope was part of the Western Ghats forest landscape. We were suddenly coming across flocks of ruby-throated and gray-headed bulbuls, brown-breasted, paradise and Tickell’s flycatchers, green warblers, orange minivets, racket-tailed drongos, a lone spangled drongo (another bird that we were more familiar with from inland forests), flowerpeckers, sunbirds and orioles. We even heard the distinct calls of the Malabar pied hornbill while standing on the beach. That was surely a first for us.

The short hike to the spot mentioned by the caretaker should’ve taken us ten minutes but we ended up reaching an hour later. Just as we reached, a large white shape swooped above us and landed in a casuarina tree near us. We were being stared at by a large female white-bellied sea eagle. And she was sitting on her nest. Her partner was nowhere to be seen. We felt we were too close to the nest so quickly moved away. We hiked up to the top of the cliff and found a spot where we could look down at the nest. A short search led us to the perfect clearing from where we had an uninterrupted view of the nest…and the two fluffy down-feather covered chicks that were in it. Scopes out, we spent a long time watching this beautiful site.

White-bellied sea eagles usually nest on tall cliffs or trees overlooking the coast. But there is seldom a vantage higher than their nest to observe the activities within the nest. We lucked out. Just as we were taking all this in, we heard a loud call from out in the ocean. The male was returning with a large fish in his talons. The female responded to the call and the chicks cocked their heads up. He soared at the edge of the cliff, a few metres away from our smitten faces, and then swooped down to the nest. The female and the male exchanged places, she took off into the blue abyss while he fed on the fish and regurgitated food for the two little feather balls. What a moment that was.

Over the next two days we spent every morning and evening walking the forests and recording birds that roamed this unique coastal forest. We spent a lot of time watching the nest and the taking note of the various fish species they brought in. We even managed to squeeze in a walk among the laterite plateau. Here we could observe large flocks of Syke’s short-toed and Malabar larks, Blyth’s and Richard’s Pipits, white-browed bulbuls, lapwings, a lone shaheen falcon, a pair of steppe eagles, a crested serpent eagle and large flocks of barn and red-rumped Swallows. It was like we were exploring multiple habitats from our base at the beach.

The overall bird list ended up being over 120 species including pelagic, coastal, forest and grassland species of birds. On the flipside we had spent just that first evening in the water. We even managed night walks for tide pooling (walking among the rocks during low tide looking for stranded fish, shrimps, crabs, nudibranchs and sea snakes).

We reflected on our friend mentioning that there is no wildlife here for us when she recommended the place. How pleasantly surprised and delighted we were to find out otherwise. It was the best break away from our usual frozen work place, a truly unique Christmas and definitely the perfect end to 2021.

Beaches, forests and birds- we will be spending more time in this slice of paradise in the years to come.