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.

More bird driving, this time Ladakh!

I will be very honest with you, I never thought of bird when I was planning to drive to Leh from Delhi and come back via Srinagar. Really I had no thought of birds at all. And yet I look back and see that on my trip I stopped for birds a fair bit. Ok the pix are really amateur and blah but the surprise of them was the fun part.

Two birds I had never heard of were spotted and Photographed by my daughter all of 13. With my camera and without my permission, but thank God she did cuz I would never have the Horned lark and the Himalayan chough in my collection if she had 'obeyed dad and not touched my DSLR".

The landscape is stark and forbidding and the road is.... road what road... there is no road but the exhilarating thrill of the high mountains gives me a rush. This is all the more so when a francolin struts across the road (?) in front of my car or darts off down the hillside as I drive by. The birds made me watch the sides of the road and the hillside much more. I had dismissed the Himalayan chough as a crow initially and not really given it much attention, in truth the road at Rohtang was so bad and cut up, that I was giving staying in one piece, my full focussed attention. It was only in Pang that Anjali, my daughter got the pic of the chough.

Crossing the Moreh Plains after Pang was a battle in itself and I will not make that trip again in a Santro loaded with kids, for all the tea in China. It was a really hairy experience. I had Scorpio drivers who met me in Leh comment on the road and ask me how I got thru. At the tea stop almost at the end of that awful drive across the Moreh plains was where my daughter spotted the Horned Lark. Actually I had to put that pic on Indamike in a thread called "which bird is this" to know it was the horned Lark. I was busy darning my frayed nerves looking nonchalant and filling the car with gas when she took the pic and saw it only later that night in Leh.

The ubiquitous Himalayan Magpie is a beautiful if rather threadbare bird. It looks for all the world like it needs to get its suit repaired at the tailors. These are all over the place in Leh and the whole Ladakh region. Funnily enough I never saw them in 2009 when i was up there. This trip in July 2010 I saw a whole truckload. Somehow had not got the hang of the camera then, so pix are not really up to scratch.

Then wonderfully enough driving to Pangong lake I was able to photograph a Himalayan Marmot. These are usually shy creatures but driving by does not seem to bother them. The photo taken from a moving car was not too bad. Driving in Ladakh is a little different to most other wilderness drives. The stark landscape is an acquired taste. Personally I love it. The beautiful rock formations and the striated layers of rock in mountain sides, the sand blowing away from the edges of ridges exposing spires of granite forming fantastic castle turrets on the side of the rivers, these are the sights that thrill me. Driving along and seeing mile after mile of rocky slopes and huge slabs of upright rock hundreds of feet in the air gives one a feeling that cant be explained easily. The Mars-scape, as it was described to me is interspersed with patches of deepest green and, as the marmots have proved, life abounds here. Further along we saw a whole family of marmots and got a couple pix of them too.

I am not really into this type of drive by shooting but in some situations it seems the only way to get anything, so any port in a storm. At pangong there are gulls, black headed gulls. I just could not believe my eyes. How could there be gulls at 16500 ft on a lake a few thousand km inland??? It really boggles the mind. How did they get there? What do they eat? Nest? Breed? Its just unfathomable, at least for me.

Seeing them was fun though and I just enjoyed the view after i got over my initial shock. The panorama was to die for and that was worth it all.

Bird walking in Ranthambore!

Yes..... Walking inside the tiger infested jungles of Ranthambore!

For those of you who have been there its no great shakes right? There is temple there and a fort and the public walks there all the time. Haha! We had a fruitless safari ( read no tiger sighting) and I was slightly peeved and running to irritation t having driven all the way from Delhi only to hear that the tigress with cubs had been sealed off in zone 5 cuz she was not well, having suffered an injury and been treated by the rangers. I wanted so much to shoot pix of tiger cubs. Rats!

Anyway, it was the 4th day of the waxing moon and the temple was alive with pilgrims who come to do the walk around the temple thru the forest. I asked the guide if we could do that, he was like "sure just get off and come home on your own." I was ready and yet the kids said they wanted hotel and breakfast. So I demurred. Then it occurred to me that they could just go and I could come a little later. So I got off the open canter with my camera and the long lens and decided to walk the rest of the way. All of 4 km.

It was an amazing walk. Just knowing I could see a tiger at any time and watching the birds going about their business was just so much fun. The pilgrims were there in force and the jeeps were whizzing by, the only discordant note was their honking. during the morning safari I had spotted a white bellied drongo but got no shot of it. He very decently came by and I got a few really neat shots at him. A handsome fellow, little smaller than his city buddy the black drongo.

A beautiful pool yielded a gaggle of moorhens and I just sat there and watched and took a few pix. They squabbled a bit over the supply of weed and no doubt other tasty tidbits they were going after. The magarmuch (croc) in the pool splashed off at being observed while he was sunbathing, I fear he had dark things on his mind regarding me and I stayed clear of his domain. A common kingfisher came along made a quick dive for his mid morning elevenses and pushed off leaving me once more amazed at his beauty. Just sitting there and contemplating the scene relaxed me and I fear if the tiger had made an appearance I would not have noticed.

A few local girls walked by and seeing my huge lens giggled among themselves while passing comments about my purpose there on the jungle road. I took a few pix when they were out of speaking distance just so nobody objected. Certainly they did not. Some of the boys showed me a croc in a crevice of rock. baby croc.

I met up with them later and they said they had seen a leopard just after they met me, right by the next pool. Such is fate, I saw birds they saw leopard, but the moorhen pool had calmed my nerves and I was ready to forgive anyone anything.

THIS IS GOING TO BE CALLED BIRD DRIVING!

We were driving to Ranthambore National park after hearing of sightings of few weeks old tiger cubs with their mother. Need less to say my daughter said "so cute!! can we go can we go!" I need no second invitation or encouragement. Always ready to drop work and run off to some forest or the other, I even convinced the kids friends to bunk school and come with us. My kids are home schooled so they promised to catch up with work later in the week.

Driving thru Rajasthan is always nice cuz the road is so good from Delhi to Jaipur. We made that in good time and then hit the district road which left a lot to be desired in terms of surface. Surface.. what surface!!! Mud, rock, gravel and macadam share the space equally. The redeeming feature was the bird life along the way.

I spotted a series of birds and decided i wanted to go slow and stop and take pix in the good late afternoon sunlight. I stopped for what looked like a shrike, and got a good shot of a collared dove into the bargain. Only hassle was that i left my glasses on top of the car and realised only 20 km later. 1000rs down the drain! Aaargh! Then a series of Indian rollers took my mind off my worries and scores of bank mynas kept us company as we ate the humble fare at a roadside dhaba. Paying off the not so humble bill, I got to see more rollers and then a black backed shrike. This bird was so bold as to let me approach fairly close. Unfortunately he moved right when i was to take a photo and I could only get underbelly shots. A pied starling made an appearance and got a better shot thatn i did in Chilika. Sparrows and silverbills on a sheaf of wheat made a nice photo as well and as the light faded I got down to the serious business of driving much to the kids approval.
Had a great bird walk in Ranthambore which I will share soon.

The lost lake story!

Living in Gurgaon for years and hearing of the lake of the flamingos and not seeing it was eating me. I have been to many places like Bharatpur and Ranthambore and all that, but to realise that there was a lake with flamingos in it right here near our home and not go there has been too much for me.

I set off once or twice in a valiant attempt to locate the lake and ended driving in circles for hours and getting nowhere. Google maps I found dont help when nothing looks the same and people are digging deep sewer lines and the kids in the car are clamoring for Coke and respite.

Finally I decided to leave all the half hearts behind and take off. Coke bah, respite forsooth! But this plan too grew moldy on the shelf as I get busy with work and all that hinders a birder from simply getting out there. Wandering around in circles also did not appeal to me and my faith in google having been shaken I was in need of a good tonic to make me get out there again. The bracing brew came in the form of an idea. Take a cab!!! The local driver would surely know or at least speak enough haryanvi to figure it out. Sheer genius.. I told myself smugly as I asked the kids if they were ready for flamingos, (I had a change of heart and since I was not driving...). The chorus of no's told me I was on my own and my tripod toters had just given me the brusheroo. I would have to tote my own tripod, along with my new 3 kg lens, I was going to get my gym time alright.

Next morning the cab arrived and sure enough, our man Flint, had not the foggiest that there was a jheel before Karnal 140km away. I assured him that Google had clearly marked it on the map and all we needed to do was believe and drive. His face showed the level of his faith in Google as he mumbled something derogatory about nuts and lakes under his breath and prepared resignedly to drive me to the kingdom come. He was a sport tho' as it turned out and in short order he had the area of the lake pegged and after a little shady driving on the wrong side of the road with a weather eye out for cops on bikes, he brought me to the same fields and ponds where I had lost my way last time.

Here the haryanvi paid off and he asked some people for directions and of course they knew the lake, so before you could say sweet lassi, we were off lickety-split down the road to the lake.

I spotted a group of curlews and stopped him and as I set up my camera to shoot he really got the shutterbug bug (to coin a phrase). I shot the curlews and over exposed them like the khans. Further along a shikra caught my eye and that I did better with.
When I got back in the car he asked me all about my camera and my other bag (tripod) and all that I was up to. As I explained I realised I had a tripod toter right here. When we arrived at the lake which is adjacent to a nice resort type place (where the beer is cold btw), I asked him to join me look at birds. He was flipped and after paying 5rupees (!) each we were given a free rein over the 150 acre of parkland and lake.

Let me tell you that there were no flamingos at the time I went. Apparently about 100 species of bird migrate to this place in the winter, I got a good look at a few birds but it was a lean time. The heronry was almost enpty with only a few grey herons and painted storks there. The purple heron which is seen here a lot is a shy bird and even the long lens could not give me a shot, though there were a few. A whole slew of ducks and other swimmers were in evidence, shovellers and teals and so on. I am really bad with ducks so could not id a lot of them. Purple Moorhens and teals were in the reed beds groping for food, the kingfisher was in action close by and gave me a lot of practice focussing the manual lens. The dear taxi guy Krishen carried the tripod and we had a long 6 km walk around the lake into the dry areas and grassland behind the lake.

There are a few raptors in residence there and we saw a few fish eagles and one that looked a serpent eagle but too far to really clearly id him. The parakeets both rosy ringed and alexandrine keep you company with their calls. The dove population is really up there with collared and spotted doves everywhere. They are called 'thodi' in haryanvi. nice!

The grasslands proved to be rich in bird life and I got munias, a handsome drongo, a redstart and a 'wryneck' never heard of it but my buddies on indiamike say its true. Another bird I spotted was a beautiful red all over, a little perching bird. since I could not get a clear shot I could not id it.

All in all the lost lake was certainly worth the wait and the drive. I hope to make it a regular feature earlier in the morning so the heat does not kill me. ha!

One cold day in January.

I have a great friend in Chandigarh with whom I play Scrabble for points. I might add he is the only one I do that with cuz he is the only one who has beaten me in recent years. James, is a great birder and you will find his bird blog very interesting.

It was a really cold day and I had been frustrated in my attempt to get anything done due to the Govt. order closing schools. So, determined that my trip should not go to waste I asked James if he wanted to go on a walk and look for some birds. James is a really lucky guy, in that he attracts birds. I got the beautiful shot of the bee-eaters in my blog when I was with him. So I was pretty hopeful of some good sightings.

He suggested we count species and see how many we get in a half hour. So off we went. The housing sector in Panchkula where we were did not have much to offer but he of course knew all the good spots. A nullah in the middle of the sector was a rich spot and we were alternately repelled and attracted by the polluting plastic and reeking water and the quantity of bird life. The ubiquitous egrets dotted the nullah

A smart White Chested Kingfisher sat on a wire overlooking the nullah, he very kindly stayed till I could take a picture before flying off with a squishack squishack. A little walk around the houses to get us nearer the nullah and we were in front of a lapwing and right behind him a little sandpiper plied his beak in the flowing water seeking his dinner. A ring-necked plover flew off as we approached. We were hoping for a sight of some silver-bills but no such luck.

The aerobatics team of swallows and martens was there in strength and they put up a great show. The twisting, weaving, rolling, somersaulting, loop-the-loop flying was simply awesome. Try as I might I could not get a decent shot and finally after about 20 tries just gave up and enjoyed the show. A couple of pond herons flew in as the lights went low with the sun dipping below the building height. These were so amazingly camouflaged it was so hard to see them fro the bridge over the nullah. I had just seen them land there, if not I would have probably sworn there was nothing there. Their brown green backs and bills make it almost impossible to see them from above.

Leaving the nullah behind we walked through the housing area and came through a little village area with collared doves and spotted doves and a score of common mynas poking about. These birds are bold as the proverbial brass monkey virtually fearless and walking about among people working, ladies sitting and chatting, and the shopkeeper plying his trade with equal nonchalance. Their sharp little eyes missing nothing as they forage freely under the charpai’s and under the chai-wallahs nose for morsels of food.

The sun had well and truly set and the flights of birds heading home to roost crisscrossed the sky. Egrets, mynas, lapwings in ones and twos, a solitary fish eagle all heading different directions passed us overhead and the chill evening breeze set our feet for home and a hot chai with the hope of a pakoda.

The species count was 21 and I was pretty happy about it. James said he has seen up to 40 in the same space and time in the past. I told you he was lucky fellow.

CHILIKA PLANS AND A DRIVE TO REMEMBER!

On arriving in Orissa I had a day free so decided to go to Chilika and watch dolphins at Chilika lake. The rare endangered Irrwady dolphin is resident there. Actually Orissa has a lot of wildlife happening and I was really pleasantly surprised at all the opportunities Orissa provides.

Well my flight arrived early and my driver arrived late so that combined to start me off late. Then my dear driver was completely clueless about where to go and how to go and despite saying clearly i wanted to go to Satpada he pushed off in a different direction. Some times i really wonder if the angel of bird watching does this on purpose to teach us all patience.

When I found he was on the road to no where i got a little upset about it and he very sweetly told me he would take a short cut so we would make up for lost time and be there in no time at all. yeah yeah right!

Turned out that on the little village road he took i got some great photo ops and enjoyed watching a lot of birds. Needless to say i missed the dolphins because the short cut took us 3 hours and the day completely went south.

Any way the highlight of the day was the really cool prawn masala lunch Oriya style with chapatis that were really to be seen to be believed. Luckily the prawns were awesome so i forgave the guy his chapatis and moseyed on.

GETTING STARTED

As an avid wildlife entusiast all my life, i finally got a decent camera and have started posting pics on facebook and enjoying it.
Birdwalkin is going to be a simple blog of my nature walks and camera antics. hope to post some of my pics here both animals and birds and other beautiful sights of nature.
I hope any one who reads it will have good laugh and good relaxed fun read.

The joys and frustrations and victories and defeats of a casual birder. Some times we all wish we were into landscapes that dont fly, flit about and fly away. ha!