Bhadra WLS @ Monsoon

With IIM friends made a quick weekend trip to bhadra. Highlight of the trip was spotting grey headed fish eagle, white bellied sea eagle and tons of river terns. Monsoon is here. Forest is lush green. Overall water level is less but still the place is awesome enough to justify multiple visits.


Here is a grey headed fish eagle we noticed during boating. I like the head turn that is away from the tree branch.

Grey Headed Fish Eagle | Bhadra WLS

Though the tern population peaks during april-may towards end of may still there were substantial number of  river terns. Gives lot of opportunities to make flight shots. But as with the flight shots it is hard to plan the composition.

Flight of the Tern | Bhadra WLS

Here is a little cormorant in the morning sun. I like the stare into the empty space on the right. Gives a sense of "looking forward to" feel to the image.

Little Cormorant | Bhadra WLS

The terns just keep taking off and landing in the one of mini islands in the dam backwaters. It is a matter of deciding when to take the flight shot.

Tern Flight | Bhadra WLS

Nilgiri Langur | TopSlip

A Nilgiri Langur at the break of dawn outside the entrance of Top Slip Tiger Reserve. This is endemic to Nilgiri Biosphere.

Nilgiri Langur | TopSlip

Oriental White Eye | Munnar

This cutie decided to check us out while we were hanging around near our tents in munnar. Here is the wallpaper version.

Oriental White Eye | Munnar

Streak Throated Woodpecker | Valparai

In general woodpeckers are shy and antisocial species. But this one delighted our valparai morning walk by being patient and allowing us to approach close.

Streak Throated Woodpecker

Somehow had missed out on posting this one. Jugal our naturalist and bird guide had mentioned this bird "Hoopoe Lark" was a specialty of Great Rann of Kutch. We went out looking for this in Great rann of Kutch. This bird partly resembles the common Hoopoe and hence it gets its name. The peculiarity with this bird is every time it would allow us to get closer and once we settle down the bird would start running. The bird every time it runs on wet soil the foot marks were immediately baked by kutch heat highlighted by the exposed salt.

Hoopoe Lark footprints


After two hours of running behind we almost gave up and got on to the vehicle thinking of going back. Magically the bird suddenly approached us close and climbed on to a nearby shrub giving us eye level shot from the vehicle itself. After running behind the bird by foot it was ironical the way we finally managed to make images of this bird.

Hoopoe Lark - Potrait

Chestnut Bellied Nuthatch
A species of nuthatch seen around Assam and Kumaon region.

Update : Looks like it is not restricted to Assam and Kumaon alone. Actually its association is more defined by the type of forest it is found rather than just north or southern parts of indian and in this case it is tropical dry vegetation. Thanks to Deepa for the correction.

Environmental shot of White Eared bulbul. Shots in shaded areas always introduces a color cast. In Canon with auto white balance it introduces a blue cast leading to a color shift. Though I would like to keep the white balance constant and not disturb it at all times when auto white balance gives incorrect result have to manually adjust it while processing. This is also the advantage of shooting in raw. It it not possible to change white balance during processing in a straight forward way if you are shooting jpeg.

Shrikes of Kutch
Shrikes use thorns like spears to kill its prey. These are some varieties of shrikes that can be seen in Kutch. Though these are different types the commonality comes from the fact they all share a similar thorny habitat.

Red Backed Shrike - Male
Guess because of their look the english common name for them is "worrier".



Southern Grey Shrike
Think you can call this Black & White shrike :) Unlike other shrikes this has only shades of grey, black and white. Both Male and female look alike.



Rufous Tailed Shrike - Female
Cousin of Brown shrike.



Rufous Tailed Shrike - Male

Had mentioned in my earlier post about the candelilla shrub. This is a slightly wider view of the same with an european roller on one of its pencil like stems. At dawn and dusk it is common to see a bunch of small birds occupying individual stems. Down south bird photographers are always on lookout for setting like these since it gives a chance to get clean blurred background and achieve nice subject isolation in the image.

This grey mongoose saw us the same moment we spotted him. Not knowing what to do he quickly jumped for safety of his burrow. From there he partially peeped out to keep an eye on us...just in case...

Black Francolin ( Kutch )
This is a male Black Francolin. He found himself this nice perch before making the continuous territorial call that breaks the morning silence.

Images of purple rumped sunbird feeding on nectar.

Male PR sunbird


Female PR sunbird

Two images showing purple rumped sunbird in its habitat. I actually enjoy making these type of images of birds/mammals in their world with some empty space in the frame more than full frame/closeup portrait shots.

Flowerpecker among Flowers
Typical habitat of flowerpecker. Since this one was about to preen itself it stayed still and posed for sometime.

Carpenter Bee
A common carpenter bee. Did not know they have such glossy wings.

Ashy Prinia
For lack of any specific place to do photography over weekend without getting stuck in traffic took the safe approach of visiting Hebbal. Here is a Ashy prinia in morning light. Common bird in beautiful settings in morning light.

Here is a puff throated babbler or spotted babbler that is more often heard than seen. More of a just a documentary image because of low light and bad shooting conditions at Nandi hills.

Tickells Blue Flycatcher ( Nandi Hills )
For people who shoot mainly in weekends with limited time window it is mostly opportunistic birding. Though we have some idea of what we want to shoot hardly it works out that way. We go to the spot,scan the area and end up shooting anything that moves in the best possible way with the given circumstances. But once in a while we find birds which are preening or hanging around near their nest so it is possible to predict their behavior which means we can hang around in the same location for better shots. This applies to most birds and over the last weekend the pattern repeated itself with this Tickells blue flycatcher. Initially just saw a fleeing glimpse of this blue colored beauty. The conditions were very bad atleast from a photographic standpoint. Completely misty, the bird was in shade leading to a low shutter, open aperture and high ISO, a sure shot recipe for grainy and blurry image. The male was busy picking up insects and the female was collecting nesting material. Eventually in the middle of all the activity the male decided to move towards partial sunlight giving way to some decent shots.

Orange headed thrush
Made at Nandi hills this weekend. After running around in the thick foliage behind this guy he surprised us by coming in the open for a short while.

Since their primary source of food is fish it is possible to see both white bellied sea eagle as well as the osprey close to large bodies of water. The only difference between them is the way in which they fish. The sea eagle skims the water surface for fish whereas the osprey can dive deeper once it locks target on a fish.

White bellied sea eagle
Not a great shot still kept it since it is my first sighting. Shot at around 11:30Am in the morning harsh light. Also the image is a reasonable crop.



Osprey
Posted an image of this guy sometime back. This is the scape version. Actually a crow was seated right on top of the left side branch which is seen in the image. So while photographing this guy was sort of worried the crow might irritate the osprey ( which it usually does with other birds ) and drive him off :)



UPDATE :
Since the crow did not disturb the osprey and allowed me to photograph peacefully as thank you to the peaceful crow :) posting an image of osprey along with him :))