When traveling to an island chain of any sort, it is really going to be the endemic birds where the guides will focus. The Andaman Islands have quite a number of endemics - we saw some and we missed some.
Here's a sampling of some we saw and where I was able to get a photograph.
Jerdon's Nightjar (Caprimulgus atripennis)
Andaman Crake (Rallina canningi)
Tricky bird. Very shy. I was the only one lucky enough to get a photo. Seen our first evening on South Andaman. We tried again on the last morning (our three birder escape), but were unsuccessful. I'm not sure the cropped image helps much. I like the full image where I am reminded of how quickly it ran across the road.
Above and below: Andaman Scops owl (Otis belli)
Andaman Hawk-Owl (Ninox affinis)
Andaman Coucal (Centopus andamanensis)
Formerly Brown Coucal. Not uncommon. Heard everywhere, but when they showed up, they disappeared quickly and did not hang around for photo ops. This was the best I could do. The only good thing about this photo is that you can tell it's a coucal. The Andaman coucal is the only one on the islands. (The EMC described this bird perched on the windowsill of their hotel room - definitely an under unappreciated sighting.)
Above and below: Andaman Teal (Anus albogularis)
Andaman Teal was formerly considered as a subspecies of the Sunda Teal (Anus gibberifrons).
Andaman Drongo (Dicrurus andamanensis) vs. mystery bird
I included the photo above because of the questions it raises. It is such a poor quality photo to illustrate Andaman Drongo. But the other drongos it could be seem to appear relatively uncommonly on the Andamans, and I don't know how much to trust the range maps in my 2011 Princeton field guide. Black drongo is also possible as is female or juvenile Greater Racket-tailed drongo. We saw plenty of the easily recognized male Greater Racket-tailed drongos. There is also a Bronzed drongo common on the western side of mainland south India. The wing of the bird in this photo is bronze and this could be reflection from the sun, but then why aren't the bird's head and breast feathers also sun-reflected? The bronze wing color does not show up in the Bronzed drongo's field guide illustration, but I found a few illustrations in the Princeton guide that did not match the real life bird. However, a Google image search also does not show obvious bronze on the Bronzed drongo. The bronze color could be a secondary to worn feathers or could be juvenile plumage.
A more careful look revealed that I took this photo on 3/31/23, the afternoon of our outing for Blue-eared Kingfisher. It's the last photo I have saved from that afternoon. The more I look at the photo, it begins to remind me of an Andaman treepie. The whiteish eye (not found on any drongo that I could tell) and the bronze coloring would be explained. The way the bird is perched on the branch also would explain why the treepie's white patch is obscured. Neither guide called out Andaman treepie on that afternoon, which they surely would have done because it was a still needed bird. Take my ID attempts with a grain of salt. In either case, an Andaman endemic.
Andaman Masked owl (Tyto alba deroepstorffi)
That's a barn owl you say. True enough and barn owls are very special, especially when you live where I do because we don't have them. I copied the very first paragraph from its Wikipedia page: "The Andaman masked owl (Tyto deroepstorffi) is a barn owl endemic to the southern Andaman Islands, an archipelago between India and Myanmar, in the Bay of Bengal. [2] Regarded by some authors as a subspecies of the common barn owl (Tyto alba), it is recognized by others as a species in its own right."
The smallest treepie, but still a very long bird.
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