Yesterday, Sunday 29th November, 2020, I went to Bakkhali with my birding friends. A little past 5 am, when it was still quite dark all around, Partha, Suman Paul, Malay Mandal and Sanchita De came to my house in Suman's black Esteem. Camera bags were loaded in the boot of my Duster and off we went to Bakkhali. We were about half an hour late from my target time. Sujan was ahead of us in his car. We met at Bakkhali beach.
We by passed Diamond Harbour and went via Sirakhol, Usthi and Hatuganj which is our usual route for going south of DH. This road was in a terrible state of repair with huge craters right from Shirakhol to Hatuganj. In places trucks were stranded in the middle of the road with broken axles - obviously result of the deadly combination of illegally heavy loads and bad roads. On the way back we avoided this road and came straight through Diamond Harbour town. It was smooth sailing all through.
On the way up to Bakkhali, we stopped at a place for coffee and sandwiches. Sanchita had brought them from home. They were delicious. We must have her in our team in future for her culinary skills alone.
In Bakkhali we parked in the official parking lot past the West Bengal tourism complex and immediately went to the beach. We moved to the left (east) and soon met up with Sujan and his team. He had come with Sandip Das, Bhaskar Banerjee and Tapasi Das. Except for knowing Sandip a little, I didn't know the other two at all.
Sujan told us there were a few Amur Falcons in the vicinity and we should watch out for them. We soon saw two of them.
There was one channel about 50/60 feet wide, parallel to the shore that had about 2 feet water. This was low tide time and water was receding. In the distance we could see hundreds of gulls where the beach ends and the sea starts. Sujan and his friends waded across the water body and went to check out the gulls (mostly Pallas's and Brown headed etc).
We saw the gulls in the distance take flight as if they were disturbed.
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