On my recent business trip to India, I went to a place I’ve always wanted to go, but never found time on my previous trips: the ruined fort at Tughluqabad (spellings differ wildly), in the southern part of the city. This fort, built in the fourteenth century, is a reminder of the long history of Delhi, which has seen the rise and fall of at least seven cities in and around the capital of India. The nearby Qutub Minar, the world’s tallest brick minaret, is a remnant of an even earlier bygone Delhi city.
Click here to view Tughlaqabad Fort’s location via Google Maps
The driver from my hotel was able to find the fort after only a few false starts, so I had a couple of hours to roam the area, seeing what I might find. The attraction of the ruined fort is the vast acreage of acacia and scrub habitat at the site, home to many wintering bird species. Being guideless, I was able to wander where I pleased, which is always nice when searching for birds. Guides tend to want to show you what they know, which rarely includes the local avifauna. On the other hand, without a local birder as guide, I was unable to locate or ID many of the species that my bird guide suggested might be present.
The birds I did manage to see and identify are all pretty common delhibirds: Green Bee-eater, Rose-ringed Parakeet, Purple Sunbird, Indian Chat. There are a few birds I was unable to ID, and I’m sure many birds that I simply missed. Blue Rock-Thrush was the bird I’d most hoped to see there, but I was unable to find it. I also ran across a few monkeys, which is always fun. See the photo gallery below.
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Ben, I’m glad you were able to get out and do some bird-sighting and sight-seeing (or should that be “site-seeing”?). I really like the bird photos — the parakeet I can see as a parakeet, and the green bird with the sharp beak is the green bee-eater?? Which one is the chat and which the purple sunbird?
Glad you are home safely now too!
Meme
Hi, Meme.
The chat is in photos 5 and 6; are the captions not working? I can see them in my version. Between this post and my most recent one, though, the caption generator broke. I don’t know why, but I’m hoping the people at NextGen come through with a fix soon.
I didn’t post a photo of the Purple Sunbird; I got a few pix, but they’re all really low quality…
Nope, my mistake. I was looking at the photos through the slide-show feature, and the captions weren’t showing. But I just clicked on one photo and it came up big on the screen with caption in place. Then I could toggle through the photos with prev/next feature. So captions ARE working in this post. (And the photos are a lot easier to see in the large format!) I’m still learning my way around all this cool new technology.
Meme.