My World of Food and Travel

For a long time, the wallpaper on my laptop featured a bird whose name elicited a disbelieved laughter from my colleague.  “Black and orange flycatcher?” he had said with a slight guffaw. “Are you sure you are not making up its name?” He had once sent me the picture of a domestic goose from the resort he was staying in Wayanad with the caption ‘Orange-footed White Wayanad Goose’.  “It sounds like the name of my goose,” he had inferred. Perhaps it did. But as I was saying, it had been one of my long cherished dreams to catch sight of this beautiful bird, endemic to the Nilgiris. For that to happen, we would have to pay a visit to Ooty, or Udhagamandalam.  So, like they show in the advertisement for Alto K10 car, we decided to ‘chase our passion’. The date fixed was 6th March. The itinerary comprised four birding spots – Botanical Gardens, Doddabetta and Cairns Hill Reserve in Ooty, and Sims Park at Coonoor. My humble wish list had four birds – Nilgiri laughingt...