Back of the Blog - Bastar Hill Myna, the Mimic bird!!

Back of the blog. Here we will share tit-bits and snippets on India Travel which may be useful for a traveller in India. It may be some new information about the place, a new cuisine one can explore, a bit of history, a funny anecdote or a good travel book. Anything connected to Travel in India. 

All of us have seen the Myna bird. It is the common "Indian Myna".

Have you heard whistles of Bastar Hill Myna? Probably not.

We had not either till we started planning our trip to Bastar.

This is the bird whose whistling is close to that of a human being. We had read about it and made sure that we see and hear them whistle when we planned our trip to Bastar, Chattisgarh in March 2011. These are small stocky birds living in upper canopies of thick tropical forests.

Here is an excerpt  from Wiki on the bird

"Both sexes can produce an extraordinarily wide range of loud calls – whistles, wails, screeches, and gurgles, sometimes melodious and often very human-like in quality. Each individual has a repertoire of three to 13 such call types, which may be shared with some near neighbours of the same sex, being learned when young. Dialects change rapidly with distance, such that birds living more than 15 km apart have no call-types in common with one another."

We were fortunate to spot them when we visited Kanger National park in Bastar. This is now the state bird of Chattisgarh and is protected under "Endangered species act".

If you are planning a trip to Bastar in Chattisgarh, don't miss hearing them.

Useful Links

Kanger National Park, Chattisgarh

Hill Myna in Wiki

Bastar Hill Myna on You Tube

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Do you need help in planning a trip to Chattisgarh? You are welcome to write to me at poorna62@gmail.com.

Happy to help