We arrived about 1pm after a sickening descent fromn lovely Munnar, down the hairpin bends that had seemed no problem on the way up. Our lawyer host met us at Kothamangalan and put us in a rickshaw for the Bird Sanctuary. His mother met us at the gate and took us inside the sanctuary to their house where we introduced to Great Granny (88), daughter-in-law and granddaughter. They made us so welcome we stayed a 3rd night. The setting was lovely - just two or three small houses surrounded by forest, with a lake at our doorstep. Each morning our host took us out for a 2.5 hour walk at 6.30 in the morning, showing us all the local birds, and then we'd come back for breakfast, hot and sweaty and in my case very happy. In the early evening Sudah, his mother took us on another 2.5 hour walk. In between while Samuel lay on his bed and read or slept. I've had a bit more energy, and chatted to some of our fellow guests, who were all loving the welcoming family and delicious home cooked food, or even sat in the shade (sweltering looking for more birds. We saw 60 birds I hadn't seen before on this trip, many of them rare and local only to this area. I got reasonably good at spotting and identifying the different types of Oriole and Drongo by the end of the time there.
Really sad to leave today, and a bit overwhelmed by Kottayam, where we are staying one night before going to see the temple at Ettumanur and then on to another homesty by another lake and another bird reserve. Samuel is enjoing the birds too you'll be glad to know, and appreciating the occasional mammal like the malabar giant squirrel and the bigger brighter birds like the Malabar grey hornbill and the Malabar Trogon, of the extraordinary frogmouth.
Here is a picture of a pair of Frogmouth (they do not move, relying on their camouflage):
and another bird (I think it is a drongo) [S]
Cathy
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