This was one of a 'regular' trio of birds along the banks of the Kosi River in late 2008. These reliable birds were in stark contrast to their poor form over recent years, that saw them being a very difficult bird to come by on this north Indian circuit. Even on this occasion we tried a couple of times unsuccessfully at the same site, before finally getting them after an exhaustive search with one of the other tour participants, Tom. This involved wading across channels, precarious balancing on makeshift 'boulder bridges' and the like, before we were eventually waved back to our starting point (birds all too frequently seem to get the least laugh), by a relaxed and dry-footed Hein, who was calmly watching them at his leisure! However, no one was complaining at this outcome, as every encounter with an Ibisbill is pretty darn good no matter what the effort required. One of the theories about their poor form in recent years was that they had abandoned this area due to the high levels of disturbance in this popular tourist area. However, these ibisbills made a mockery of this theory, as they stood there seemingly completely unperturbed by the noisy families that came down to the riverbanks while we were there, and clattered about as they washed their pots and pans with noisy vigour! (This made my attempts at making sound recordings of one of the calling Ibisbills a little tricky to say the least-thank heavens for the power of editing software!)