31st March - Phulchowki Hill
After an early breakfast we set off in three 4WD vehicles to drive south of Kathmandu to Phulchowki Hill {sometimes spelt Fulchoki}, the highest point in the Kathmandu valley, at 8500 ft above sea level at the summit. The plan was to drive to reach the top as early as possible then bird our way down, picking up different groups of species at different elevations. After a pretty lengthy drive out of Kathmandu and its busy roads, we arrived at the turn-off, and proceeded to wind our way up the hill, negotiating endless hairpin bends on the gravel road - it must have taken around and hour or so to reach the highest point. Although pretty high by UK standards the 'hill' was densely forested right to the summit. It was pretty cool and cloudy at the top but gradually got warmer as we made our way down, walking down some distance, then moving on a little in the jeeps, then walking again and so on. We birded the hill for most of the day, taking a picnic lunch about halfway down, when it had thankfully warmed up a little. Bird highlights near the top were mostly of the small and difficult to photograph variety, including Long-tailed Minivet, Verditer Flycatcher, White-crowned-, Striated-, Chestnut-crowned-, and White-throated Laughingthrushes, Grey-hooded Warbler, and Whiskered-, and Stripe-throated Yuhinas. As we progressed downwards we were soon trying to fathom out the small 'leaf' warblers and were it not for Suchit's familiarity with them we would have struggled - in addition to the Grey-hooded, we had Buff-barred, Ashy-throated, Whistler's, Chestnut-crowned and Blyth's Leaf Warblers. Concentration on small birds was alleviated at times by raptors and we had a good selection with Black-eared Kite, Himalayan Vulture, Crested Serpent Eagle, Mountain Hawk-eagle, and Crested Goshawk. The variety and numbers of birds was enough to take your breath away and it was difficult at times to keep up - Green-billed Malkoha was a good one to get, and we had two species of woodpecker - Darjeeling Woodpecker and Grey-headed Woodpecker. Other medium sized birds of note included Grey Treepie, about 6 very showy Red-billed Blue Magpies, and Blue Whistling Thrush. There were too many species to mention them all here, but others of note simply due either to their 'eye candy' appeal or just their name, were Bar-throated Minla/Siva, Rufous Sibia, Rufous-winged Fulvetta, Nepal Fulvetta, White-browed Fulvetta, White-browed Shrike-babbler, Rufous-gorgetted Flycatcher, Ultramarine Flycatcher, Small Niltava, Orange-bellied Leafbird, Fire-breasted Flowerpecker, Scaly-breasted Cupwing {listed as Scaly-breasted Wren-babbler but now renamed in the IOC classification although the latin name remains the same}, and finally Great Barbet, Golden-throated Barbet, Green-backed Tit, Black-lored Tit, and Black-throated Bushtit {listed as simply Black-throated Tit}. At some point during this festival of birds we did manage to pause and have our picnic lunch sitting on trackside tree stumps, although the temptation to drop your food and seek out a possible new bird in the trees, was hard to resist.
Finally, birded out, we boarded our vehicles headed back to the hustle and bustle of Kathmandu, duly impressed by the ease with which our drivers navigated the seemingly random layout of roads and the dense, 'every man for himself' traffic, into the city and to our hotel, the Royal Singi. It had been a pretty tiring day so we decided to eat in the hotel's restaurant. The menu looked pretty good but unfortunately the restaurant became very busy with a couple of very large groups arriving. We were on 2 separate tables and ours waited an hour and a half for our food whereas the other table had to wait 2 hours!! The food was good but ... we could have done with an early night as we had an internal flight to catch tomorrow morning. The photos below are a few of the typical habitat of Phulchowki Hill - I'll leave the birdy ones for the main galleries.