Travel blogs: Pune’s Bird Paradise - Bhigwan, Diksal bird watching in 2016

I visit Bhigwan at least once a year for bird watching and this year was not an exception for my activity. I and Renuka decided to start New Year 2016 with visit to Bhigwan. Plan was to spend 4-5 hours in Bhigwan (main location is known as Diksal village) and come back home by late afternoon.

Greater Flamingo... Clicked in year 2015

About Bhigwan Bird sanctuary:
Bhigwan, a catchment area of Ujani Dam, is about 105 km from Pune on the Pune-Solapur highway (NH 9). An area of about 18000 hectares has been proposed as a sanctuary for migratory birds. It is an amazing place to see wet land migratory birds like Bar-Headed Goose, Greater Flamingo, Ruddy Shelduck, many spices of ducks and many more birds.

To reach at Diksal village (near Bhigwan), easy way is Pune – Hadapsar – Join Solapur highway – Drive your vehicle 100km from Pune on Highway – Do not use Bhigwan flyover – Take left at Bhigwan square on highway – Drive 3 to 3.5km – Take right for sanctuary. How to identify correct right turn is; you can spot water tank tower (yellow colored) on that T junction at left hand side of road. Otherwise ask local villagers about Diksal / “where can we see Rohit bird (Marathi name of Greater Flamingo bird)?”

You can spend half day or full day along with your camera and binocular. More than 60 bird’s species can be found in this backwater.

Travlers for this trip were Me, Renuka and Father-in-law Girish ghospurkar.

1st Jan 2016: Bhigwan Bird sanctuary (Total distance travel by car: 230km):
As we had to cover around 105-110km so we decided to leave Pune before 5 AM and we managed to leave on time. Soon we touched Solapur highway. Road condition of highway was excellent. Due to wide and smooth road, we were able to reach Bhigwan in less than 2 hours. We told our boatman friend Bharat Nagare to arrange some breakfast. We were excited to see the migratory birds.

Ruddy Shelduck at Bhigwan

Painted Stork

When we reached the village at around 6 AM, I was not surprise by looking at back water. Water level was quite low as compare to last year and main reason was fewer monsoons in India in year 2015. After some tasty breakfast we left for bird watching in the boat. Since it was a first day of year 2016, we were the only bird watchers in the catchment area.
We got to know that very few Flamingos were landed in Bhigwan backwater hence less chances to spot them. We were totally fine as every year we saw a lot of Flamingos groups. We saw a group of Woolly neck storks and we went in that direction. Every year we hardly manage to see Birds like Wooly neck stork, bar headed geese but this year then came in large numbers. We spend more time on clicking them.

Woolly neck Stork

Woolly neck stork and bar headed geese at Bhigwan

Northern Pintail at Bhigwan

Northern shoveler

bar headed geese at Bhigwan

We left that place to spot other birds. We went on other side of catchment area by boat. We saw huge group of Painted stork. We spend around hour and watched there morning activity, sun basking etc. Besides Flamingo, we spotted Woolly Necked Stork, Coot, ibis, bar headed gooses, Ruddy Shelduck (aka Brahmini Duck), Northern Shoveler, Garganey Duck, Comb Duck, northern pintail and many more.

I got my catch...Sea gull at Bhigwan

Painted Stork

It was quite bright now, and we slowly made our way back to village by boat. During our return journey, we decided to take a walk on the bank of Dam. Bharat left with our extra bags to his home and we joined him after an hour. After some nice click during trail, we came back. Our trail ends on a good note.

Open billed Stork

Bar Headed gooses

We returned to Bharat’s house and had lunch on highway and returned home by 4 PM. If you want to witness beauty of migratory birds (Our guest) then what you are waiting for.

Bird List which we saw in Bhigwan:

Greater Flamingo	Garganey Duck	Wire-tailed Swallow
Pueple Swamphen	Pochard Duck	Common Swallow
Common Moorhen	Bar headed Duck	Red Rumped Swallow
White-breasted Waterhen	Common Teal	Purple Rumped Sunbird
Glossy Ibis	Northern pintail	Red Avadavat
Black Ibis	Domicile crane	Spotted Munia
Oriental White Ibis	River Tern	Black Drango
Asian Open bill Stork	Common tern	Red-Wattled Lapwing
Painted Stork	Gull billed Tern	Yellow-Wattled Lapwing
Woolly Necked Stork	Grey Heron	Osprey
Common Sandpiper	Purple Heron	Western Marsh Harrier
Spotted Sandpiper	Pond Heron	White Throated Kingfisher
Curlew Sandpiper	Cattle Egret	Common Kingfisher
Black Tailed Godwit	Median Egret	Pied Kingfisher
Black Winged Stilts	Large Egret	White eye Pochard
Northern Shoveler	Eurasian Spoonbill	Pallas Gull
Ruddy Shelduck	Little Cormorant	Brown headed seagulls
Spot-billed Duck	Yellow Wagtail	Black headed seagulls
Common Coot	Grey Wagtail
Comb Duck	Green bee-eater