



Julius and myself decided to visit Kharghar today. We reached Kharghar around 8 am but the weather was quite chill and foggy. This was the result of snowfall in the northern parts of the country where the temperatures dropped by 3 to 4 degrees.However after 15/20 min it began to get warmer and out came our friends showing off. The light was perfect and had a good day out.
May be a pessimistic view but one more habitat which may go the developers way. . As soon as we entered we could see all the grass and shrubs burnt out. We were told that people just throw cigarette butts and ends up in a fire on these hills. But the patches of burnt areas bely this theory. On the way up we could see lot of patches of burnt grass.
We saw Indian robins feeding on the roasted insects and lot of green bee eaters, palm swift, dusky craig martins. However the great catch was the purple sunbird feeding on milk weed.The Iora was posing away to glory.
There were lot of raptors. probably peregrine falcon, oriental honey buzzard. However posting these pics and would be glad if our expert birders could identify the same. May be this is a quiz for us at Navi Mumbai and how good are we at identifying raptors.
All the best .

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Hi namunas
Pics from today's visit to kharghar alongwith Julius.
Request my friends to help me identify the raptors shown here.
The butterfly i think is a plain tiger.
Please post your comments on this blog itself.
thanks


\the Eurasian Golden Oriole comfortably perched and providing a good photo opportunity as well as a good study in a perfect light setting. This plain tiger brightly backlit in the morning sunlight is a visual treat. i can never forget this wonderful sight and can experience a great pleasure capturing on camera.
This raptor is one of the unidentified ones today. I feel it is a peregrine falcon. Can someone throw light on this. The other raptor which we were figuring hard to identify. After going back I googled and also checked the book of birds and i somehow have a feeling that it is a honey buzzard. Our expert birdman Adesh would have the final say.

this may be the peregrine falcon?


This I feel is the Oriental Honey buzzard.