Birding at Bharatpur

Glad to go to Bharatpur despite tour agent's advice not to because of conditions so bone-dry waders don't bother coming anymore. Who cares, so long I get my picture-perfect Saras cranes & anyway, grassland birds attract me more.... such as catching 3 types of owls in broad daylight, especially a cute pair of collared scops sleeping fluffily on a branch

and the hard- to- spot orange laughing thrush which got our calm, "seen-it-all" guide (900 birds in India in 10 years) excited for once...

...and after I got lazy, he found me an Indian rock python within 15 minutes of my asking. ...

+ over 30 lifers at least, it was really hard to decide on the sighting of the day.... Even the spotted greenshank with its batik-like dots on its feathers' edge deserves a top ten ranking for opening my eyes to the differences in waders.... somehow they had all looked uniformly dull to me previously....