Wednesday 29 February 2012

Wildlife

On Tuesday the 21st we went to Srirangapatnam, and stayed at the lovely Amblee resort by the river. The hotel there has lots of animals and birds, including two ostriches called Coco and Bruno. There is a bird sanctuary nearby, which was the point of our trip there. We saw a great collection of birds, such as purple herons, which may well be my favourite bird, as well as night herons (which look like penguins), beautiful red and blue flycatchers, storks, pelicans, spoonbills, a river turn (who was looking after its chicks on a rock), kingfishers and chicks of various varieties. However the overwhelmingly brilliant things we saw, which we weren't expecting at all, were the marsh crocodiles. Some were as much as four metres long, and so going out on a four metre long boat was quite exciting.

After Srirangapatnam we went to Bandipur National Park, where we stayed at the very fancy Windflower (which has the most fantastically comfy beds, great as I've been sleeping on mattresses on the floor most of the time, and as I got ill again). On the first day we went on safari and saw a wild dog and a mouse deer, both of which are rare. The wild dog was huge, with a great big bushy dark tail and a red body. The mouse deer had striped patterns on its back like a big cat and was very gorgeous. Other animals included spotted deer (common and not very bright), langurs, sambar , jungle fowl, and we got one short glimpse of an elephant before it amazingly disappeared completely into the bush. On the second day we saw lots of elephants, including a group of six, with a baby, who took a very long time to walk across the track right next to us. But the really amazing thing we saw was a leopard, lazing in a slight clearing in the bush. It lay on its back for a while, showing off its white belly and demonstrating how completely it didn't care about the three Jeeps full of people that were staring at it at one point. We also saw two mongoose (one of which had a ginger bum), a hare, barking deer and a serpent eagle. I've never been on safari before, but I've decided I will be many times in the future.

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