Forktails, sunbirds and a picnic by the stream

My guests had spent four days in Kathmandu's temples and traffic, and they told me in the car that they had never really been birding before. I like days like that. We were at the gate of the Godavari botanical garden at six, with mist still lying on the lawns, and within ten minutes a pair of Red-billed Blue Magpies sailed across the path with their long tails trailing behind them.

We walked slowly along the stream through the garden. Scarlet Minivets in the treetops, Himalayan Bulbuls everywhere, and a Great Barbet calling its loud pi-ooo until we finally found it at the very top of a tree. By eight o'clock they had both learned to stop and listen before looking.

Higher up the road the forest turns mossy and green, and this is where the mixed flocks move through. We stood still on one bend for half an hour while yuhinas, minlas, sibias and two kinds of sunbird worked the same oak. Then, at the first big rhododendron in flower, a male Mrs. Gould's Sunbird came in to feed. Crimson, yellow and that long blue tail. My guest put her camera down and just watched.

We had lunch on the stone steps of the Phulchowki Mai temple, and as always I asked them to keep one eye on the stream. A Spotted Forktail came bobbing along the wet rocks a few metres from our feet, then a White-capped Redstart, then a Little Forktail. Nobody finished their sandwich for a good while.

In the afternoon we climbed into the cool upper forest, where the rhododendrons were at their best, and reached the summit at three. The Langtang range was hidden in haze that day, but two Himalayan Griffons came up on a thermal right past us. Thirty-four species for two people who had never been birding. I think we made two birders.