Visited Morni Hills, DistrictPanchkula, Haryana this sunday. Already famous for its varied flora and fauna,Morni is infact a tiny village located on
the foothill-zone of the shivaliks. Ametalled road connects morni with panchkula for a distance of about 20kms., onmajor district road 118 and is 3000 ft. above the mean sea level. morni hillshave two water bodies, small agricultural tracts and presence of
river ghaggar.The reserved forest limit starts just as we take a turn towards morni from nadasahib, a gurudwara. a check post has been put up by the forest department, butfound it not operating on sunday. vehicular traffic, leading to a lot of noisekeeps the
wild life at bay. i was amused to notice atlest 10 vehicles passingevery 10 minutes, with no limit to the speed and constant honking. as weentered the forest area we could find few monkeys and langoors on the road sideprobably just because of the feeding by
passers by.
Moving a little ahead we heardthe chirping of some birds and stopped to notice what it was? with muchdifficulty, because of the vehicles moving constantly,
we noticed a tree fullof berries on which some birds were sitting. to our surprise it was the
white -eared bulbul. Also known as Himalayan Bulbul and white cheeked bulbul,a scarce resident in Haryana. The bird is found in wooded areas like mornihills and kalesar forests. Its local name is
kushandra or bhooroo as told by a farmer locally
so many of them fluttering from one tree toanother managing what little they could eat, scared of the noise. we stoodlifeless for around 10 to 15 min.
So that they come to the berry treeon the road side where we were waiting for them to be clicked. after they werepretty sure we were not a threat to
them they started coming one after theother giving us a chance to click them.
We moved ahead searching for somemore birds. There was a group of some off road bikers enjoying driving on theturns of the hills. We found a
red startsitting quietly on the branch of a tree at village mandana, the largest villagein morni hills. We managed to click.
Little ahead we found the
red whiskered bulbul also known as red vented bulbul, the singerbird of India. It probably looks like a musician with a turban on the top ofthe head-the crest. It has a long tailand feeds on fruits, nectar and insects.
Morni has varied flora likebabul, kikar, bamboo, khair, amaltas, jamun trees are commonly seen on loweraltitude. As we move higher the type of vegetation changes to pines and chirtrees and temperature also falls suddenly. From
mandana, the view of the plains is breathtaking. The ghaggar river separates the tipra rangefrom morni hills. From the T-point we can turn back to chandimandir and alsotowards pinjore through thapli which also boasts of a famous nature camp.