Noggan Man - This Week in Birdland 2nd

This Week in Birdland

2nd - 8th March 2026

This week in Birdland didn’t quite go to plan. After spending the last week or so preparing to leave Goa and return to the cooler climes of a European spring, our flight got cancelled at the airport and we found ourselves back in our clean and empty apartment. We are luckier than many to find ourselves in such a privileged position, but nevertheless it came as a shock and we decided that a change of scene for a few days would be a good idea. After a short search online we found an exciting looking homestay not so far away from us on the banks of the Moira river/creek and most of the following pictures are from there.

Scroll down to get to the photos & skip the babble

I won’t do a review here but have linked the place we stayed, Fishtail Creek, as it was a real treat and the owners Vivek, an accomplished birder and nature photographer, and Alka are genuinely nature focused and knowledgeable. We spent 3 days on and around the Moira and saw four birds that were new to us: puff-throated babblers, an oriental turtle-dove, a slaty-breasted rail and a grey-bellied cuckoo.

The beautiful garden attracted some great birds and we were woken daily to the sound of the puff-throated babblers who really loved to shout in the new day and made a lot more noise than you would credit them from their relatively diminutive stature (the clue is in the name I guess!). However, they were too jumpy and the light too dark for me to get anything other than an ID shot. There were also crimson-backed sunbirds and the beautiful female Jerdon’s leafbird and red-vented bulbuls to name just a few.

During the dreamlike sunrises and sunsets in the fields and wetlands between Moira Manos and Fishtail Creek we saw paddyfield pippets, purlple herons, both ashy and black drongos and black kites. On an early morning river bird boat trip with Vivek we spotted over 30 species in a couple of hours including four types of kingfisher - common, stork-billed, pied and white-throated, an oriental darter along with some incredible peacocks and peahens. Given their size, they have evolved a much better capacity to camouflage themselves than I had noticed previously.

Back in Arambol on Saturday morning and things had gone pretty quiet around Giroba Temple and the dunes except for a few regulars and pair of alexandrine parakeets who sounded like they were at an after-party!

Ali Reeves