{"id":1858848,"date":"2018-01-20T18:00:00","date_gmt":"2018-01-20T17:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/focusingonwildlife.com\/news\/?guid=a3d602b925d95422bc31bec8d65c0434"},"modified":"2019-12-23T01:26:26","modified_gmt":"2019-12-22T12:26:26","slug":"western-ghats-3rd-december-day-9","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/focusingonwildlife.com\/news\/western-ghats-3rd-december-day-9\/","title":{"rendered":"Western Ghats – 3rd December (Day 9)"},"content":{"rendered":"

We were up at 05:45, loaded the car and then drove to Cairn Hill Park just outside of Ooty to get better views of a couple of the endemics to be found here after our last visit on 1st December when the weather was terrible.<\/p>\n

As we entered the park there were three Black-and-Orange Flycatcher showing very well, albeit in rather dark forest conditions. We also caught up with Nilgiri Robin and Nilgiri Laughingthrush once again but the light levels were far too low for decent photographs \u2013 it was nice to see the birds when it was not pouring with rain through.<\/p>\n

We then headed for the Ooty Botanical Garden for around an hour, this is where a Kashmir Flycatcher usually winters but we had no luck with this bird but did see Velvet-fronted Nuthatch, Greenish Warbler, Oriental White-eye, Nilgiri Flycatcher and Nilgiri Flowerpecker amongst the well-kept gardens with local people enjoying Sunday and taking innumerable \u2018selfies\u2019.<\/p>\n

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Black-and-Orange Flycatcher – Cairn Hill Park, Ooty<\/p>\n

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Black-and-Orange Flycatcher – Cairn Hill Park, Ooty<\/p>\n

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Nilgiri Robin – Cairn Hill Park, Ooty<\/p>\n

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Greenish Warbler – Ooty Botanical Garden<\/p>\n

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Greenish Warbler – Ooty Botanical Garden<\/p>\n

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Nilgiri Flowerpecker – Ooty Botanical Garden<\/p>\n

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Oriental White-eye – Ooty Botanical Garden<\/p>\n

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Oriental White-eye – Ooty Botanical Garden<\/p>\n

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Large-billed Crow – Ooty Botanical Garden<\/p>\n

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Large-billed Crow – Ooty Botanical Garden<\/p>\n

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Great Tit of subspecies mahrattarum – Ooty Botanical Garden<\/p>\n

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Velvet-fronted Nuthatch – Ooty Botanical Garden<\/p>\n

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Nilgiri Flycatcher – Ooty Botanical Garden<\/p>\n

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Greenish Warbler – Ooty Botanical Garden<\/p>\n

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Ooty Botanical Garden<\/p>\n

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Outskirts of Ooty<\/p>\n

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Bonnet Macaque – Mettupalayam viewpoint<\/p>\n

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Lady selling flowers at the Mettupalayam viewpoint<\/p>\n

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Wild Gaur outside of Ooty<\/p>\n

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Wild Gaur outside of Ooty<\/p>\n

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Entrance to Anamalas Tiger Reserve<\/p>\n

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Asian Elephant in the Anamalas Tiger Reserve<\/p>\n

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Playful young Bonnet Macaques – Chinnar Wildlife Sanctuary<\/p>\n

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Green Imperial-pigeon – Chinnar Wildlife Sanctuary<\/p>\n

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Chinnar Wildlife Sanctuary<\/p>\n

We then headed on the long drive to Munnar in the knowledge that we had probably faffed around too late in the park to get to Munnar at a sensible time. We passed through spectacular mountain landscapes clad with tea plantations, and plantation forest but sadly with little remaining natural forest. We stopped at Chinnar Wildlife Park just across the state border in Kerala. This is a site where roosting Spot-bellied Eagle Owl is seen but we had no luck and it materialised that the bird had not been seen for a few weeks.<\/p>\n

We did see Green Imperial-pigeon, Brown-headed Barbet, Coppersmith Barbet, Yellow-browed Bulbul and brief views of Yellow-throated Bulbul but we were a little disappointed that the Eagle owl was not present. From the Chinnar Wildlife Park we had a 56km drive to Munnar, this took around 2.5 hours due to slow winding road with moderately heavy traffic and the whole journey was a bit of an ordeal so we were glad to arrive at the Hotel Tea County in Munnar at 20:30.<\/p>\n

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 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

We were up at 05:45, loaded the car and then drove to Cairn Hill Park just outside of Ooty to get better views of a couple of the endemics to be found here after our last visit on 1st December when the weather was terrible. As we entered the park there were three Black-and-Orange Flycatcher […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1921,"featured_media":2148849,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fifu_image_url":"","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[6984,5],"tags":[213,5010,7369,5518,7844],"class_list":["post-1858848","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-blogs","category-wildlife","tag-asian-elephant","tag-greenish-warbler","tag-macaque","tag-oriental-white-eye","tag-western-ghats"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/focusingonwildlife.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1858848","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/focusingonwildlife.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/focusingonwildlife.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/focusingonwildlife.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1921"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/focusingonwildlife.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1858848"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/focusingonwildlife.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1858848\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/focusingonwildlife.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2148849"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/focusingonwildlife.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1858848"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/focusingonwildlife.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1858848"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/focusingonwildlife.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1858848"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}