Kashmir's Endemic Birds | Flycatcher, Nuthatch, Nutcracker & Orange Bullfinch

From 16–20 June 2026 I spent five days birding the Kashmir Valley — the conifer forests of Gulmarg and Shankaracharya, the alpine slopes near Daksum, and the wetlands of Manasbal Lake. Over 12 checklists we logged 90+ birds targeting the endemics that make this valley special. The forests delivered the birds I came for. Top of the list was the globally scarce Kashmir Flycatcher, a Western Himalayan endemic breeder that winters far to the south — a genuine bucket-list bird. Alongside it came the Kashmir Nuthatch working the pine trunks, the boldly patterned Kashmir Nutcracker, plus White-cheeked Nuthatch, Rufous-naped Tit, Bar-tailed and Hodgson's Treecreepers, Tytler's Leaf Warbler, Indian Blue Robin, Rusty-tailed Flycatcher and a surprise Spectacled Finch. Yellow-billed Blue Magpies kept the canopy busy throughout. Higher up near Daksum, the star was the Orange Bullfinch — a stunning, seldom-filmed Western Himalayan endemic — with Black-and-yellow Grosbeak, Grey-crowned Goldfinch, Pink-browed Rosefinch, Himalayan Rubythroat, White-bellied and Blue-fronted Redstarts, and Rufous-breasted Accentor rounding out the alpine haul. A dream Ibisbill turned up along a mountain river, Manasbal closed the trip with Little Bittern, Whiskered Tern, Grey-headed Swamphen and kingfishers, and we even had a brief glimpse of a Himalayan Monal on the slopes. If you enjoy Himalayan birding and bird photography, subscribe for more field footage and trip reports. You'll find full galleries, prints and gear notes from this trip over at avianclicks.in. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ ⏱️ CHAPTERS 0:00 Arriving in Srinagar & Dal Lake 0:35 Birding the Srinagar outskirts 1:02 Heading to Gulmarg 2:46 Kashmir Nutcracker 2:58 Kashmir Nuthatch 3:15 Shankaracharya forests & Botanical Garden 3:25 Kashmir Flycatcher 4:12 Ibisbill on the Jhelum near Anantnag 4:40 On to Daksum 5:26 Orange Bullfinch 7:32 Little Bittern at Manasbal Lake 7:43 Nilnag Lake, Yusmarg 8:42 Kashmir Nuthatch in action 9:27 Birds of Kashmir collage 9:45 Credits ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ 🙏 CREDITS & THANKS This trip was organized with help from Dilip Gupta of AvianTrips — huge thanks for putting together a seamless itinerary across the valley. Our birding guides Irfan and Ishaq were superb in the field, consistently getting us onto the toughest targets, and our driver Adil was outstanding — he genuinely knows the roads, the conditions and the birding spots across Kashmir. Grateful to the whole team for making this such a productive trip. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ 🔗 LINKS 📷 Photo galleries & prints: https://avianclicks.in 📋 Full eBird trip report: https://ebird.org/tripreport/541322 ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ 📸 All images & footage © Aditya Rao 2026 · avianclicks.in #Birding #Kashmir #BirdPhotography #HimalayanBirds #KashmirFlycatcher #OrangeBullfinch #Himalayas #IndianBirds #WildlifePhotography #Ornithology #BirdWatching #EndemicBirds #Ibisbill #Nature #Wildlife