Home

The most awaited field visit in our course was of ELA Habitat, Pingori, Maharashtra.
ELA habitat in pingori village is an area for watching many migratory birds between deccan plateau and western ghats of Maharashtra. It also hosted a  very first of its kind, Owl festival to spread awareness and conservation about Owls in India.

We started our journey early morning as usual. When the entrance of Daundaj had arrived and by passing further around 4 kms we were welcomed by Chinkara flock! In mid-way, we found grey francolins on the ground. This made us more delightful and happy. We were pretty sure of very exciting bird sightings further.

We were also lucky to be blessed with a very special guest named Dr. Henry Noltie who is a botanical historian. He had presented us the botanical history of various plants found in India. You can read more about his work here (https://stories.rbge.org.uk/archives/author/hnoltie)

We entered through ELA habitat gate and walked a few steps to reach the center.

It is a quite a busy habitat with lot many tree birds surrounding around the building of ELA Foundation. I sighted below two birds on entry.

Purple Sunbird (Cinnyris asiaticus)

Blue Rock Thrush Female (Monticola solitarius)

More birds after breakfast.

Bay backed shrike (Lanius vittatus)

Black Stork (Ciconia nigra)

Dusky crag martin (Ptyonoprogne concolor)

Common Kestrel Hovering (Falco tinnunculus)

Kingfisher nests

Post lunch, we were pleased to see the presentations of Rahul Lonkar on ELA Habitat and Dr. Karmalkar sir on Birds behavior such as Preening, Moulting, Huddling, Fluffing etc.

A very significant efforts were then showcased by Mr. Avinash Nagre for artificial nest building of malabar hornbill. He had designed an artificial nest which was accepted by hornbill.

Artificial Nests designed by Mr. Avinash Nagre

And here there are some water feeders and grain feeders which we can make it and put it in our home gallery. We were elaborated with the procedure of making this grain feeders and water feeders for birds.

Grain feeders for birds

And, the trap nets used to catch birds for research in Ornithology Research center.

Thanks to Dr. Satish Pande sir for making a well equipped Ornithology center for bird rehabilitation and also organizing various medical camps in these rural areas of Pingori village near Jejuri, Maharashtra.