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The morning air was cool, the sky cloudy but not overcast. The hills were shrouded in mist, and the ground was still wet from the rain the night before. I hadn’t been planning to go out birding, but with the announcement that another lockdown would be starting that night, it seemed a good idea to go for a hike while I still had the chance. So I decided to go to the Phulbari Buffer Zone, a wooded hillside right under Shivapuri National Park. In the past Phulbari has yielded so

It had been a rain-filled night, but the morning weather looked promising, so my brother and I decided that we would walk to Gurje, a pass located in the norther rim of the Kathmandu valley. We started walking at 6:00 in the morning, and soon the sun was shining on us as we walked towards the hills. There were Spotted Doves, Oriental Turtle Doves, Blue-throated Barbets, Oriental Magpie Robins, and White-throated Kingfishers around us, and Red-rumped Swallows and Barn Swallows

Gurje Bhanjyang is a forested pass on the edge of the Kathmandu-Nuwakot district boundary. Looking south from the pass, one can see most of the urban sprawl of the Kathmandu Valley. There are lots of and the distant forms of Champadevi, Chandragiri, and Phulchowki, the three main hills that border its southern edges. Looking north from the pass there are layers and layers of hills, most of them still forested. Beyond the hills rise the Himalayas, and on clear days there are e