Birds of the Sacred Lake 🇮🇳 Birdwatching in Pushkar

Pushkar is a holy town around a sacred lake. It was mentioned in the most ancient Hindu sources. People must even take off their shoes when they are near the water.

Of course, nobody would hunt birds at such a place, and, I guess, fishing is banned there too.

This respectful attitude to nature makes local birds quite tolerant of people.

This image is my entry for Show Me A Photo Contest Round 247

Never-ever seen kingfishers so close. This chubby Pokemon dude was watching the water and hunting fish only 4 meters away from me. Love his seriousness... and can't help to remember those videos on social media, for example (not mine):

Too fast... And the legs are too short to get free, lol...

Another careless bird:

The black-winged stilt.

You can see many of them at Pushkar Lake, and, if you're careful, they'll allow you to approach very close.

When gibbons are walking, they hold their hand raised as they are too long. Flight of stilts looks just as clumsy.

If you are a birder and want to quickly find where to start: go to this bridge and look over it:

It's easy to birdwatch at this "bay" adjacent to Hotel Moon Lake; also, the Western shore hosts cormorants and geese. Saying about November and December.

In the same area, near Hotel Moon Lake, they have another bridge, which makes a great multi-apartment complex for birds:

Do yo use those holes? They are all taken by birds, mostly, by pigeons, but there are "ethnic minorities" either, lol:

A parakeet!

Not far, a red-wattled lapwing was searching for juicy insects in a muddy puddle.

Another large feathered tribe is the mynas. Great and common mynas are widespread in Thailand. In Pushkar, I found a species, new to me, bank mynas:

They are numerous in Pushkar, and don't mind being very near to people, like, sitting at the next table at a restaurant, lol - waiting for food from visitors - I had this experience.

Mynas belong to the "Starling Empire", and thus are smart guys and great song performers. Somehow, you can see their intellect in their eyes - like, if they look inside of you...

I feel they actually read human body language and facial expressions to understand if you are dangerous or just curious or passing by. Just a feeling. Many birds only look at how far you are and if you are watching them.

Geese! What beautiful birds!

No idea who they are but I like them!

I found a bigger flock at the Western shore of the lake.

But this group had only 3 individuals. I visited this corner of the lake three times, and each time these sentinels were on duty. The black bird in the image is a cormorant...

Cormorants are divers, and you can recognize them from far thanks to their habit of floating in the water like "a drowning duck" - with only the neck outside the water.

I instinctively want to save the life of the drowning bird, but then "ah, that's a cormorant" 😄

Then, they need to dry their feathers. This one was doing it right on the shore - never seen this species so close.

But on the Western shore, they have a more comfortable place for basking:

Such an amazing lake of tranquility in the middle of Rajasthan - full of birds! I rank this town 10 from 10 from the point of birding, and, thus, place Pushkar 🇮🇳 in my personal top of best birdwatching cities along with Bangkok 🇹🇭 and Songkhla 🇹🇭