Places I Visit With My Camera: Bird Sightings at Bhigwan

Bhigwan is located on Pune-Solapur and is roughly 100KMs from Pune. The actual bird sightings happen in a yet another small village called Diksal which happens to be close to Bhigwan. Click here for the wikimapia location. It is the back waters of Ujjani dam which invite the migratory birds during the winter time. The most awaited bird being Flamingo. Unfortunately when we visited this place Flamingos were yet to arrive. Below I have tried to list clicks of few birds that I was able to capture.
Special thanks to Sanju for providing me with his 300mm lens. Due to which I was able to get these clicks. This was an old lens and hence was not compatible with my DSLR D40. This is also the reason why some clicks are blurred.
Myself and my wife we departed from Pune around 6:00AM and reached Diksal around 8:45AM with two small haults. We used a two-wheeler for our travel. If you plan to go via a four wheeler you might reach early which is really good. Once you reach the village you can ask the villagers for exact directions to the sightings place. You start with small water bodies on both the sides of road. The level of water depends on what time of the year you visit. It was here that we spent our initial time and were able to find Black Winged Stilts, Egrets, Grey Herons, Red Wattled Lapwing, Sundateal and Paddy Field Pipit (though I am confused whether it is Long Billed Pipit or Paddy Field Pipit).

As you further move towards the abandoned railway line (refer the link provided above) you tend to see less amount of birds. Don’t get dishearten keep proceeding and you would come across small hutments. These are the local fisher men which would offer to take you through the water for more bird sightings. Typically single boat would coast you around 500Rs. to 800Rs. We paid 500Rs. for two of us and on the condition that we should see some birds. It took some time for us to get to correct place. Initially we saw lots of Cormorants, Egrets, Rudy Shelducks and a bunch of black headed gulls (again I am not very sure whether these were black head or brown headed).

We had to travel some distance till we were able to see Whiskered Terns, Black Headed Gulls, Painted Storks, Glossy Ibis, Woolly Necked Ibis, Black Headed Ibis, Rudy Shelduck, Eurasian Spoonbill and Grey Heron.