On Sunday 30th Nov, SPROUTS had a winter trail at Tungareshwar, Vasai. Around 10 of us joined for the trail and had quite a few sightings. Rosy Pastors were seen near Vasai stn itself, having a breakfast of freshly baked sunlight and some very noisy conversations with each other. We reached Tunga at around 8-8:15 and started our trail with calls of Greenish Warbler and Red Whiskered Bulbul's. It was quite cloudy and we were scared that id'ing the bird would be difficult, nonetheless just as we entered the forest hardly 20 mins distance away we found a nice mixed hunting flock. The first birds sighted were 3 Racket Tailed Drongo's looking quite handsome in black tails, a Paradise Flycatcher female made the next entry. There were quite a few birds and initially it was tough trying to decide which bird to observe, all of us were crying excitedly to each other to look at this or that bird, it’s something different. We had a good sighting of Black Headed Cuckooshrike but had a tough time id'ing it as there were a lot of White Bellied Drongo's around making us wonder if it was a cuckooshrike we just saw or drongo until Anand confirmed the sighting, few of us also saw a Large Cuckooshrike. A Black hooded Oriole peooed away while Scarlet Minivets added colour to the grey day. A beautiful Black Rumped flameback flew from one tree to another while a Rufous Treepie gave us a very short glimpse of his back. A Black Naped Blue Monarch female confused us for a while never quite revealing herself fully making some of us think she was a verditer flycatcher untill we got a good glimspse of her and the mystery was solved. In between all this excitement Anand, Varun and Sangeeta sighted a tree shrew which the rest of missed sorely, we went near the tree where she was seen but no luck. One of the last sightings was of a Common Woodshrike. After all this excitement there was a lull till the end of the trail, we moved out of the area and started walking on the main path now paying more attention to the food in our bags rather than the binocs in our hands. The raptors were missing due to cloud cover and the only 1 or 2 we did see were very tough to id, though one of them could possibly have been a short toed snake eagle.
There still was a little water in the streams and we decided to sit near one on the huge boulders to finish off the rest of the food and accrodingly climbed down a small valley to be near a stream wich had a checkered keelback making trips to the surface to breathe air, whirligig beetles tired of whirling in the water and a very fat golden eyed bullfrog meditating on the rocks . While sitting there eating slice cakes and other goodies we discussed a few problems plaguing tungareshwar. Tunga has more of evergreen trees and its topography is quite diffn from sanjay gandhi national park, those of us who have been to SGNP can make out this difference rightaway. SGNP also has too many exotic trees while tunga somehow has a old world feel with the very tall and dense trees and land sloping upwards. We came to know that tungareshwar has 2-3 temples inside and also an illegal ashram in the inner parts. Due to this there is a lot of human activity what with people incesstantly turning up on foot, on noisy bikes, rickety rickshaws , cars and buses whcih honk away with merry abandon. Tungareshwar has a very beautiful forest and if not maintained well we could loose it to careless devotees who come to partake of its spirituality without paying attention to its natural beauty. On our way out we collected a lot of plastics, thermocol plates and also glass which was strewn everywhere on the boulders, a parting gift of the many visitors who dont have much else to give to this already beautiful place.
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