Mottled wood owl spotted and documented on Thiruporur to Chengalpet Road

Though a resident species, the mottled wood owl is rarely sighted due to its preference for forest tracts

When the first light hits the land, these nature-loving residents from the Nanmangalam-Sembakkam area bird outside the Nanmangalam forest, watching its peripheries with a gimlet eye. Their persistence has rewarded them on many occasions, placing them at just the right spot to clap eyes on a rarity.

On November 17, 2021, three from that informal group — Jithesh Babu, Leo Vino and Kumaresan Chandrabose — saw the rarest of rare patches of yellow, on the rump of a flycatcher. It was the jaw-dropping experience of watching the yellow-rumped flycatcher (more popularly known as the ‘Korean flycatcher’). As the sighting happened after back-to-back weather systems, the bird had likely been swept off course, and flew willy-nilly to Nanmangalam to give these birders something to trill about. These birders have drawn up a checklist of birds from the region: one of its highlights being how a chestnut-winged cuckoo (the species is a passage migrant in these parts) punch the clock unfailingly on this section during winter before moving on for a longer sojourn elsewhere.