An Encounter with Pitta

Indian Pitta (Pitta brachyura)

 Last weekend was fun when Ruta called Chaitra and told that she has spotted Indian Pitta inside their campus. What next, we both packed up our bag with Chai's binocs and  my camera! Eager to catch this bird live, we drove to RRI. But to our surprise, Saturday went in vain and we couldn't spot this bird (don't ask the reason, I guess it should have been obvious by now from the picture). 

As small as a baby's palm or slightly bigger in size (may be the palm of a 6 years kid), Indian Pitta is a lazy bird. Resting on the forest floor amongst the rusty colored dry leaves, Pitta shows an amazing degree of camouflage (even though it has such terrific bright colours), and that's the reason we missed out the beauty on Saturday (apparently I took a lots of pictures and saw many birds and at end of the day had forgotten about our pitta mission even!). 

However, Sunday was a favorable day for all three of us. Again Chaitra's phone rang and from other side was Ruta saying to hurry up to institute as she had again spotted Pitta. We reached (literally dropping all my household cores) and what else..There was only 4 of us- Me, Chai, Ruta and Pitta... The only sounds were- either click-click sounds of my camera, or the rustling sounds of the dry leaves due to our slow walks while chasing this damn gawdy critter, or the hopping sound of Pitta trying to hide and feed on vermis.

Must agree a truly memorable feel, I had!

Peacefully resting in the tiny scruby forested patch inside RRI, we could not only enjoy the bird's sight but also studied its typical way of feeding, its laziness and degree of smartness too..! 

Thanks Ruta for spotting the beauty and calling us on time.

Sunday was a really memorable day for me..!