Bhigwan Photo Tour

Baya Weaver ( Female)

Hey guys! I'm sorry I wasn't able to connect to you guys for a long time. Those of you who follow me on Facebook and Instagram might know that I was busy these days with Bhigwan tour and organising an event via Mindgraphs. I have been waiting for a year to visit Bhigwan. I was planning to visit in the month of December '17, but I couldn't as Flamingo sightings had not yet started due to high water levels. This time though, I visited there twice and this post will tell you about my first visit.

Now, about Bhigwan, it is located at around 100 kms from Pune where you get to see many migratory as well as residential birds. Bhigwan is also called 'Bharatpur' of Maharashtra. My visit was on 11th Feb '. I had contacted a local guide named Bapu 3 days prior to my visit. We were 4 people, my cousin brother, my brother, dad and me. We departed from Pune at around 4:30 am on Sunday by our car. It takes around 2 hours to reach Bhigwan. The actual bird-watching point is in Kumbhargaon, 5-6 kms beyond Bhigwan. We reached Kranti Flamingo Point at around 6:15 am. It is runn and administered by Datta Nagare. Bapu works for him. We arrived there, freshened up and had tea. Then we wore our life jackets and boarded the boats. The boat was in good condition and could accommodate upto 8 people. Throughout the boat ride we got to see birds like Grey herons, Black winged stilts, greater egrets, sandpipers, Asian Openbilled Storks, Eurasian Spoonbill, Ruddy Shelduck, Little Cormorant, Greater cormorant,Painted storks,Marsh Harrier, Spotted eagle, Osprey etc. Spotting the Shooting Osprey was difficult enough. He wasn't stable at all and we had to sail over boat behind him for around 45 minutes to get a good view and some good shots in our camera. We rode for around 3 hours. After the ride, we had our breakfast.

Then we departed to Chinkara Spotting. On the way we went near a spotted owl nesting but couldn't see any. Then we headed towards the Chinkara Spotting point. We can drive in our own cars in there. This point is around 15 kms away from Bhigwan. We weren't lucky enough. We could spot only 3 Chinkaras on our visit. I got some good shots. On way back we spotted bonellis eagle with their nesting.We came back to Kranti Flamingo point, had our lunch and departed to go back to Pune with the best memories.

This tour was very memorable, even though we couldn't spot any flamingos this time.

Read my next blog about my second visit to get to know how it was ,about all the spots we visited and all the sightings.

Stay tuned for my next post in the coming days!

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