Birds at Kokkare Bellur, Karnataka

I wanted to try out Zoomcar self drive rentals and was looking for a destination to visit around Bangalore. Having already seen most of the places and being April which is peak summer, there weren’t too many choices. Our first thought was to go to Sakaleshpura, but after some deliberations, we dropped the plan, as the place is best explored post monsoon.

I’d not been to Kokkare Bellur and thought it is the right opportunity to explore this place. Couple of people including Lakshmi Sharath confirmed that April is not the bad time to visit so we planned a half day trip to Kokkare Bellur and other nearby places. 

We left very early on Sunday morning and reached Kokkare Bellur by 6AM. On the way, we had to clear several checkposts, set up by election commission to search for black money. Kokkare Belluru is 12 kms off Bangalore Mysore highway- after Chennapattana and before Maddur. Slow down after Chennapatna, watchout for a left turn near a village before Maddur. If you’ve reached Maddur, you’ve missed the turn.

Road leading to Kokkare Bellur is good. It passes by a reservoir, which was all dried up. We entered the village, drove around a bit, saw some birds on tree tops, went little further which kind of looked like village has ended. We spoke to a little boy who told us that there’s not much to see in the direction we were headed and asked us to go back and explore. We asked if he could join us and show us around, he said “my house is here”. We offered to drop him back, he wasn’t interested. We decided to turn back and explore on our own and he asked for a pen and notebook. As we didn’t have it, we gave him 10 Rs.

Turning back, we stopped nearby a water tank. Couple of trees around had lots of pelicans. I climbed the steps of water tank to take better picture. Below are some good pictures of birds at Kokkare Bellur I could click.

Below: A little girl holding on to her goats.

Subsequently we drove around a bit, but didn’t spot any more birds. If we’d walked on foot in the interiors of the village and not just on the road, we would have found more birds may be. On the way spotted lots of black headed ibis feasting in a field.

Next stop was near a bridge over Shimsa river. The river was all dried up, with few drops of water here and there. Spotted kingfishers, but they were too far even for 300mm lens for a decent pick. Couple of mynahs posed well for the photo. 

Lots of white herons and few cormorants were concentrated on a small area, which probably had water and food they wanted.

Also found this cute black bird which had the shape of a sparrow, with some bluish inserts.

 

Few other birds like kites were spotted, but couldn’t manage decent photo of them.

In terms of Bird concentration, Kokkare bellur wasn’t close to Vedanthangallur near Chennai or Ranganatittu near Mysore. But the beauty here is the open space and not a confined campus where you’d find birds and go back. Depending on your luck, your willingness to explore you may find none to many birds in the village. Villagers are fond  of these visiting birds and they feed and take care of them in every possible way. This man-bird relationship makes Kokkare bellur unique. Do take a diversion from Mysore road and explore this village next time

Below image is the closeup of river bed- indicates how dried up it is


Also see: Birds on a powerline * birds near Bheemshwari *  Birds at our village- Set 2 * Birds at Singapore * Birds at our village *