Tale of a 'Fairy Tail'.

An advantage of having weekly off on a monday is "you are on your own" ! I make use of it quite effectively: Birding. :-). One fine day I visited the infamous 'Valley School' area for yet another birding session. My intentions were clear, just enjoy the trail. Hence, I did not anticipate any sightings. But my luck turned out to be good that day. Most beautiful, active and elusive 'Asian Paradise Flycatcher' male entered the arena. 

The Glimpse.

I was thrilled to see it. He was flying from one branch to another twirling his long tail. Looked to me like the bird was showcasing it's long tail all time.

Playing.

I caught its trail and started following where ever it went; of course by maintaining distance. Finally, it came near the banyan tree and started looking for insects inside the barks. APFC-male makes a distinctive sound, and is totally different from APFC female. 

Surveying.

 Female flycatchers have a short tail where as male's have an elongated tail. This makes the male bird more attractive than others. Male flycatchers also undergo rufous plumage before attaining adult stage.

It's activity was disturbed by coppersmith barbets, red whiskered bulbuls. So the bird jumped to a near by twig and stayed there for sometime.

Found me.

Angry mood.

 I sat on the ground observing the nature of the bird. It was not staying in one place for more than a minute. Making some sort of sound it flew from one branch to another in search of insects.

Inspecting a hole.

 The bird started inspecting a small hole on a big branch of the banyan tree. May be there were few insects running.

Peeping.

Still looking.

Meanwhile the chaos continued on top of the tree. I could hear barbets calling and suddenly a White naped woodpecker started tormenting on the same tree. APFC which was looking for insects for such a long time might have thought about a threat and it flew away to a distance.

Final sighting.

I tried to follow his trail yet again, but the speed of his flight left me behind. This beautiful bird gave me a solid half hour of natural entertainment. The tree had started shedding leaves due to which I was able to witness various activities of different species. This was probably the best sighting I ever had in this region till now. I headed back to my house after spending some time near the old bungalow.