Backwaters of Kerala - Birdlife

Some of the birds seen from our Houseboat

Cormorants

Darters – known as snake birds because they swim with their bodies under water and just their necks/heads above water. Their necks are very sinuous and resemble the snakes they are named for

well, strictly speaking the 'Darter' is sharing the limelight with the cormorant here ...

I believe this is an immature Brahminy Kite – they tend to soar very high and circly very gracefully (just out of reach of my camera lens) but this one actually came closer than usual so I managed to get a couple of shots before he veered away

Herons

Bee Eater – best I could manage I'm afraid. They seem to sit on very high perches so are backlit and my camera can't cope very well in those conditions

Egrets, crows and gulls are everywhere – but they're boring so I'll leave them out of the blog!  well except for these two (poor) photos of house crows.     They're opportunistic birds and have obviously sussed out that humans on Houseboats get fed at specific times of the day .. if leftover food isn't cleared away quickly they swoop in to gather it up.     

I didn't get this properly focussed, but you get get the idea (its managed to carry off a tasty bit of indian bread

and here's a few of them skimming the water (presumably for fish)

For unknown reasons, there are hundreds (possibly thousands) of ducks and ducklings on the Backwaters.  We passed several duck farms on our journey so we assume they are being bred for food but its a strange sight being accompanied by so many noisy quacking ducks in tropical climes!   I took lots of pics but won't post them here as we all know what ducks look like!