Walk on the shola boundary

It was a day after the rain. One of my friends and me decided to go one of the sholas in the Nilgiris. We had to reasons for the walk. I have been telling him about the number of Blak and Orange Fly catchers   I used to see in my walks. This time it was nothing but White-Bellied Shortwing and Nilgiri Wood Pigeon. There were lots leeches creeping onto the foot and some of them almost reached my neck. So called hunting parties were busy hunting worms and insects in the early morning. We could hear Nilgiri Laughing Thrushes and Indian Scimitar Babblers presence through out the shola, but he hardly spot any one of them.
Suddenly I heard chirp from the near by kurinji bushes. Cant believe. That was a wild dream came true to us. A pair of White Bellied Shortiwings. They flew into the shola, we followed them to a safer point, where they can,t see us. They were mating and later male bird started feeding her with worms. My friend got few photos of the male bird with food on the beak. We almost spend an hour with them in between laughing thrushes and flycatchers came and gone!!

Painted Bush Quail

We came out of the shola and started walking towards east, towards the top of the mountain expecting to get at least one photo or a video clip of a N L Thrush. We were walking by the forest road. Both sides were fenced with black wattle, nothing else. I felt so sad that I made my friend to travel a lot to see these wattle trees. We walked and walked saw a small patch of shola after a point. I hear some bird coming down from the forest of our right side, they would cross the road he said. Suddenly some thing started rolling down and four of them followed. They were a group of Painted bush Quail (Perdicula erythrorhyncha). That was an amazing sight they came to the trek path and started pecking under the leaves. Male bird has red bill, black face, white throat and red leg. Their call can be written as kirkee kirkee kirkee. They were very cautious, that I guess they heard our breath, thats it they flew away in a fraction of a second with an alarming call.