Sundarijal birding

Besides birding and being in nature for my work, love to spent my weekends with my local friends. They are my friends who are also in tourism, birdwatcher as myself and nature lovers from different walks of life including many university and college students.

After meeting at the bus park of Sundarijal, located some 18-20km from the many city of Kathmandu, we started watching and enjoying birds. There were 14 of us, much large group size, that may be that suitable for birding, however it’s good to see many like minded people, who eventually turns into nature lovers and help birds and nature conservation as they learn more about the birds and nature.

Sundarijal is also a gateway to the Shivapuri national park, to its north, finest national park, so blessed to have not far from the main city, even though I prefer Phulchauki and Godawari more for my birding and with clients.

After exploring the Sundarijal by the river and forest edge, we went to the national park, taking the path along the drinking water pipe, down from the drinking water reservoir of Bagmati river, located just few minutes higher on the trail.

Seeing many regular birds along the trail, we were so lucky to have seen the juvenile Brown Dipper and both Spotted and Slaty-backed Forktail, amazing birds. As these are also called indicator species of health of the environment, its challenging to see them these days, once used to be common and struggling to their deteriorating habitats. Guess who is responsible! We humans are in major, major reason and we now talk of climate change, that is natural and slow process but we are just making it fast unfortunately. Everyone know, also trying but the impacts is not so great so far!

Anyway, really enjoyed the walk in nature, along the forest, by the river and water, wonderful to be with the friends and like minded people. I managed to record 54 species of birds on this walk, that is not so big number I would love to see but should be happy to have been able to see, hear and record.

Happy Birding!