Peacocks are cawing right outside my rather luxe tent around the Chhatra Sagar reservoir—an unusual alarm to kickstart my day in the wild. On the table is a checklist of roughly 250 species of resident and migratory avians that frequent the area, barely 2.5 hours by car from raucous Jodhpur city. I'm on a mission to be a good birder, if only for the day. And my time starts now.