Panarwa is a village situated about 100 km southwest of Udaipur city of Rajasthan. High hills of the Aravali surround this village that has an extensive forest area, one of the densest and largest forest tracts of Rajasthan. The river Vakal runs through this forest.

Deep and shady pools of water remain all through the year at many places in the river in this region. The river course is strewn with boulders and the banks have dense vegetation. The area has been declared a Wildlife Sanctuary called Phulwari Ki Naal.

On April 20, 1997 I was looking around some of the shady pools of Vakal River for aquatic birds. I sighted a kingfisher perched on a branch about 30 m from where I stood. The plumage of this bird took me by surprise, as it was different from all the kingfishers found in this region. This prompted me to make a detailed note of its features with the help of my binoculars.

The bird obliged me for 7 min and then flew away. When I compared its features with those in ‘Handbook of the Birds of India and Pakistan’ by Salim Ali and S. Dillon Ripley (1987), I found it to be an Indian Three Toed Forest Kingfisher (Ceyxerithacus).

The distribution of this bird is restricted to moist deciduous and evergreen bio-type. Ali and Ripley’s Handbook says: “Resident, dispersing widely during the rainy season with the advent of suitable conditions. Thus, a regular SW monsoon (breeding) visitor to many areas, then also turning up sporadically in unexpected localities. Movements not worked out. Nepal eastward through N. Bengal, Sikkim, Bhutam, Assam, Nagaland. Also the humid Sahyadris or Western Ghats and their outliers from a little north of Bombay (limit not established)…”

This first sighting of the bird in Rajasthan is of special interest.