India - Bharatphur.

Firstly a big thank you to Michael Davis, Julian Wyllie and Peter Sharland (again!) who together have brought our total to within £111 of our target. Peter's contribution is through Sue Oertli's Wader Quest South Africa Gauteng Challenge 2014.

Please continue to send donations, were are so very close now, every little helps!

We are in India still and have met with mixed success. On our first day with guide Satya we were confronted by thick fog, not conducive to good wader watching. Still, at the first place we were taken through the mist we did see our first target species Yellow-wattled Lapwing.

Yellow-wattled Lapwing; in the fog Jatoli Ghana, India.

We moved on from there and were thwarted in our attempt to find Indian Thick-knee due to the weather so we moved on again to a third site.

Satya and me scanning through the fog.

By now the fog was lifting and we found ourselves searching a large, scrubby, open area. Soon after leaving the car a group of birds flew over, they were Feral Pigeons but they drew my attention to a single bird following on behind them, it was Indian Courser. Elis quickly got onto it too and we watched it go down in a field about 750m away and set off in pursuit.  We could not relocate the bird on the ground where we saw it go down, so headed back towards the car, as we did so Elis spotted a movement in a ploughed field, it was our courser and it turned out it wasn't alone, there were two of them.

Indian Courser; Kuneher, India.

Thoroughly elated by this sighting we visited the Kohni Dam and it was here we came across our third species, the previously missed Indian Thick-knee, eleven in total.

Indian Thick-knee; Kohni Dam, India.

After this we returned to the first site to get another look at the Yellow-wattled Lapwings without the fog.

Yellow-wattled Lapwing; minus the fog effect this time, Jatoli Ghana.