Bharatpur

The list of hooting callers features the brown hawk owl, collared scops owl and dusky eagle owl, and to photograph the spotted owlet, hardly a better place can be conceived, as they welcome the rising sun.

Steppe, tawny, greater and lesser spotted and crested serpent eagles constitute the distinguished raptors, while so do the black-shouldered kite, shikra, white-eyed buzzard and Oriental honey buzzard among others.

Storks are aplenty, and come in the open-billed, painted, black- and woolly-necked format, while herons are purple and grey, and ibises are black and glossy.

Greenshanks, stilts, sandpipers and jacanas hang out at the waterfront along with common coot and common moorhen, white-eared bulbuls adorn the bushes, and yellow-footed green pigeon and Eurasian wryneck decorate the trees.

Coppersmith barbets are not averse to approach, common hoopoes pose delightfully with erect crests, and white-breasted waterhen can often be shot with a wide-angle lens!

The smaller birds are not left behind either. European and Indian rollers abound, while Indian nightjars perch still on discreet branches, white-browed and red-throated flycatchers show themselves endearingly, and citrine wagtails, bluethroats and brown shrikes entice with their eponymous colours.

But saying that Bharatpur is all about birds is like claiming that the Himalayas are all about snow-clad hills. Never short of surprises, a day’s walk in the Ghana can yield cherished sights of jungle cat. Besides, jackal and Bengal monitor lizard encounters are exceedingly common, nilgai (blue bull) are commonly seen, and the park is one of the best places in the world to photograph the Indian rock python.