Date: 25th Sept 2017
For the past 2 days, Meghna (my wife) has been accompanying me when ever I go out for birding. Due to the monsoon, it is green everywhere we go with lot of wild plants and grass on the path that I take. The only thing that she keeps me warning about it to not wear short pants/shorts when I go out for birding and has been talking about snakes and other insects that might pose a danger.
It is Monday today and kids have left for school so today again we go out together. At first, we went behind DPS, but didn’t find many birds except my favorite Green Bee-eater so I decided to go around CIDCO guest house near Belapur Fort. This is a very beautiful place covered with tall trees which block the sunlight. It is difficult to imagine that such natural places exists in a city (Next time I should click the path and the trees also).
We took permission from the security guards to walk around the guest house and started moving up the path. We had just reached near the gate of a narrow walking path and suddenly I see an approximately 6 feet long snake quickly crawl away from us and hide behind an old rusted generator that was kept there. The first reaction from Meghna was that “I think it’s time to go home now” and frankly I did not have any other thought and we would have left. But then a person who worked at the guest house was passing by and we informed him that we just saw a long snake, so he now tries to locate the snake from a distance and finds it. So now I get to take some pictures … haha (below). The snake was moving very slowly and we were just watching parts of its body move from whatever view we had. We waited for some time and then the snake moves towards another pile of junk kept near the wall of the house near the Generator. All this time we could not see his head (Which is perfectly ok for me 🙂 ). When it went behind the junk, we moved a little closer and that is what is in the Video below. Nothing great in the video, but it was an exciting moment for Meghna and me. (A very different and first one in life)
Green Bee-eater feeding
Green Bee-eater feeding