Dighal wetlands in Haryana

Dighal is a really neat place in Haryana just before Rohtak where the village is literally surrounded with lakes of all shapes and sizes and which attract birds of all shapes and sizes nd particularly so in the winter time. Migratory species from the north come down to stop over... or stay.... as they wish. The bird count is maintained by a really cool young man called Rakesh. he is the local bird wallah and everyone knows that if they mess with the birds he is going to come up and say something about it. he has spent time educating the villagers not to trouble the birds. In a half a day trip i made with friends recently we saw an inordinate number of species and if we had actually kept count it was surely over about 60 or 70 species of birds, fromt he huge majestic Sarus cranes to the egyptian vultures also called Pharaohs chickens to the little bravest of the lot; the siberian blue throat.

For me this was the highlight of the trip. To see a bird smaller than a myna that came in from Siberia. That takes some doing. It was the bird of the day.

We saw some very tempting kingfisher action but it was usually too far away for a shot. we saw the osprey hover high above the fields taking stock of the situation and deciding against any fishing he left;

bar headed geese with their acrobatics thrilled us as well as some of the northern shoveller and pintails who put on a show but I keep coming back to that tough little bird who is here from siberia. Hats off little buddy!!

I FINALLY DID IT!

What you ask! yeah yeah coming to that. I started blogging about a year ago and wondered if it was a waste of time to do it and if any one would ever read it. Parallely worked on my camera skills and then wondered if there was something to it. A merger? An amalgamation? A confluence? An extra 'je ne sais quoi' was needed. A catalyst if you will or a cataclysm, an event of enough magnitude that made me do something more than wander around india and write and take pix. It all had to come together. So i waited and one day the penny dropped and www.big5safaris.in was born, where i set up an ad hoc travel assistance portal for people who want to get to the wilds of india and did not know how.


So that was cool and I enjoyed tinkering with the site and the idea and all that and was very much plugged into my 'day job'. I was ok with it and its also one of the things that gives me great satisfaction, (see www.deafinindia.blogpost.com for details on that) but yeah i was looking for a new inspiration and a special place i could put my last few working years into.

Well, i just plugged along and worked and worked and travelled and travelled and then a Facebook event caught my eye. It appears this was to be the change and the long and the short of it was that after my timid beginning with big5safaris, I quit the day job or at least side lined it for a full time job in travel and wildlife photography. Whaddya know!

On a chakkada in gujarat

freezing swim in Pangong Tso

Driving a santro with 4 people from Manali to leh.

Rafting the Indus at Nimmu.

So the smoke sort of clears and i find that i am managing a great firm with great people and we are making people take a break and get connected to nature, and quite coincidentally its called NatureMAX. visit us at www.naturemax.org and at www.big5safaris.in . NMX is focussed on giving you a specific timed/dated trip with a wildlife photography experience with experts along and helping you., and the Big5 is where you can contact me and tell me which safari, when , what , with who and i send you an itinerary and a costing and you do it on your own time.

Cycling down from Khardungla

Shooting with the long lens at Gir.

Bombed out on the grass on the downgrade from Taglangla after two days driving.

Baralachala, in July. these are sights to live for.


Now i call that a great thing. I am enjoying it and as you can see I have not blogged for a long time. I guess the mind did not have a peaceful space to work in. So i hope to blog a whole lot more and post oodles of pix. Posted a few of my random travels here and hope to have many more such. I have a lot of material from so many trips last year, so hopefully should be able to cobble some things together. BTw you can see us on facebook at https://www.facebook.com/groups/naturemax/?notif_t=group_r2j this is the group.
https://www.facebook.com/pages/NAtureMAX-expeditions/247348018668320 this is the page where i post our destinations weekly/monthly and th longer trips we call expeditions, AFrica, andamans, Ladakh and so on.

SO lets hook up and plan for good times all around.

Bird driving in Gir forest!

All the hype about lions and leopards has totally sidelined my feathered friends, who came and sat long and hard on my conscience and threatened to make a mess if I did not do something about it. So in order to keep the peace and not go to pieces over the impending deposits of guano on my soul I got out the trusty Mac and am typing away.

As a matter of fact, the birds in Gir are amazing. There are supposedly 140 species of birds if I remember the brochure right and though I did not see any such number I got a glimpse of a lot of new species for me.

As I said in Indiamike the first minute in Gir I saw a black ibis. How cool is that! The forests are full of birdsong, the spring in the air and the crimson flowers of the ‘pichkari kai’ tree. Sorry I don’t know the real name but this is the name of the tree in Kannada, my native language. It gets its name from the fact that the buds contain water which can be squirted at people close by. The range of the squirt is only about a foot or so at best and so makes for a tough get away and so a lot of close range water fighting was done by me and casual acquaintances outside my grandparents home in Mysore in oughty-ought.

Birds with random names such as Iora, Greenish Warbler and Tickell’s blue flycatcher bumped feathers and hung out with others with equanimity just as if
they had normal names.

The first day I was really lucky to get the Tickells fly-catcher, beautiful fellow, sat on a branch really nearby, but as the name suggests he is rather ticklish and fidgets about. A nightmare for a photographer. Nevertheless got a good shot of him and the brahminy starling nee myna. A common wood shrike was playing hide and seek in the tall grass and looking for something to eat no doubt. He paid us no mind as we drove by looking for lions.

The next day we happened upon a huge male lion on the road and spent all of an hour with him. Birds somehow were missed, sadly. When we left him to go on our journey, or rather, when he left us having posed enough, we drove past the lake. That was where we saw a fair number of birds. My favourite the purple sunbird came and sat close by to sing us a song as we watched him glistening in the morning sun. He is just so handsome and I am convinced that someone has told him. He is the prima donna of the forest. The Iora were out in strength and they are a beautiful green. It mixes well with the leaf cover and gives them an edge in camouflage.

Oriental magpie robins kept us company all the journey through the forest and so did peafowl. Some of these were caring for chicks and we saw a lot of young peafowl around. The cocks were all recovering from moulting through the winter and just getting their plumage back. On the way past the lake we saw a darter and a cormorant just waiting to get warm enough to brave the cold water for breakfast. These were joined by a solitary grey heron, rather near a large crocodile, but maybe they have an MOU signed. A crested serpent eagle flew by and settled at the top of a large tree, no doubt soaking up the sun was his plan too. Gir mornings are chilly in late Feb.
That evening I decided to spend some time birding and we stopped for a lot of birds. We got to see a plum headed parakeet and female, more sunbirds, Indian robins, magpie robins, fantailed fly catcher, red breasted fly catcher, white browed wagtail, munias, bee-eaters, rosy ringed parakeets, just birds all around.

Partridges crossing the pathway and whirring off in classic low level flying that the expert top-gun pilots try to emulate in vain. It was just beautiful. I was on the look out for hornbill and the paradise flycatcher but no chance. Then the coolest thing happened, a leopard crossed the track ahead of us. We raced there and found him bounding to the cover of the bushes about 50 yards away. Beautiful animal and some amazing speed he can put on. He covered that distance in 2 secs flat. All birds were out of the mind for the next half an hour as we searched for lions and found them.

2 half grown cubs and mommy. Smashing! Funny, there are never birds around lions it seems. Is that another MOU or just sour grapes cuz the lions are the cynosure of all eyes?? I wonder.