ATR - Day 80: Clicked some colourful birds followed by hornbills and then the Indian giant flying squirrel at night

The day was dedicated mostly to colourful birds but we closed it with some wonderful pictures and footage of the Indian giant flying squirrel.

December 19, 2023

Tuesday, 11:30 PM

Hornbill River Resort,

Village Ambeli, Taluka Supa,

District Uttara Kannada,

Karnataka, India

Today, we checked out from Kali Adventure Camp and went to Old Magazine House Resort in Ganeshgudi town of Taluk Dandeli in District Uttara Kannada of Karnataka. Old Magazine House is known for birding opportunities. So we spent much of the day there, looking for birds and finding a lot of them. So I got a decent number of good pictures of several colourful birds. At Old Magazine House, we have birding hides also, especially made for those who want to click pictures of birds in their natural habitat without disturbing them. 

After putting Old Magazine House’s birding hides to optimum use for almost the entire day, we came to Hornbill River Resort in the evening. Umesh ji, who is the owner of Hornbill River Resort, adores hornbills, which is why he has named his resort after hornbills. 

In the evening, we decided to shoot some hornbills. Umesh ji made arrangements for us to see Oriental pied hornbills nearby, but it was already too dark and the hornbills were at a considerable distance. So we did not get any good shots and returned to our rooms  at the resort in the evening. Around dinner time, Umesh ji told us that right behind our rooms, there is an Indian giant flying squirrel, which piqued our interest. Indian giant flying squirrels are rodents that glide on a membrane stretched between its front and hind legs, which helps them glide through the air from one tree branch to another, which explains the “flying” in their name. The Indian giant flying squirrel measures between 43 cm and 50 cm, and is found in the Western Ghats, north-east India and Deccan Peninsula in addition to southern and central China. The species does have “Indian” in its name but it is native to China, India, Laos, Bangladesh, Cambodia, Myanmar, Sri Lanka, Taiwan, Thailand and Vietnam. 

Since the squirrel is found in the Western Ghats in good numbers, we were looking for it in Goa as well. But we didn’t find any. This time around we had better luck. We did find the squirrel, and I managed to click some wonderful images and record a decent footage of it, which I’ll present to you in due course.