deponti

http://forestparkowls.blogspot.com/2009/11/peregrine-falcon-lecture-at-st-louis.html


A lecture on Peregrine Falcons...half an hour walk for me in St.Louis...of course it's a little longer to walk to St.Louis Zoo from Bangalore!

Happiness...is getting something to eat when one is hungry.






Unhappiness..is not being able to eat.





I wonder how that crow manages with that broken beak...certainly the bird looked woebegone in the rain.

We thought the mist on the hills would prevent us from spotting birds. It didn't. We thought it would prevent us from photographing birds. It did.

But then we realized that the mist, in itself, was a thing of beauty.




( more images of the mist )

And just to see how it would look, I decided to take one image of the passing scenery through the rain-washed window of the car:






And finally, you can see the way the rainclouds are moving ...gliding...along the hilltops...












Rain and mist make for beautiful photography....!

It was raining in Bangalore. It is raining in Chennai. Well, it held off long enough for me to take a long walk last evening, but this morning it's pouring again.

Here's an image I liked, from the Nandi Hills trip, of Garima holding out her hand to feel the raindrops...







Off to do various duties now...back later, when I can...

The Nandi hills trip was wonderful...but from this video, you can get an idea of how it was for birding....






It was utterly beautiful, and we did manage to see a wide variety of birds, and though I don't have the images to back that statement up, I have...plenty of fellow-birders to testify to it!

It's difficult not to sound whiny, but the past fifteen days, as the gum infection has been steadily drained and dried, have been quite murderous. I have now learnt to ask for fresh local anaesthetics as the first injections wear off...but still the deep pain has been quite unbearable sometimes...and being alone in the house is NOT very nice. To be unable, at times, to get up, and yet to know that I have to drag myself to the kitchen for even a drink of water, has been very hard.

But it has taught me how difficult it must be to undergo this kind of chronic pain on a regular basis....and surely, I will be even more gentle when dealing with ill people. I will be able to bear their crankiness, because I know how cranky one feels with constant pain; I will be empathetic to their depression, as I have experienced the lows that being unwell brings. Er...all these good intentions are there now...

These thoughts have been brought out by visiting a friend whose ailing mother is now with her, and she was describing the difficulties of caring for a very strong-willed elderly person...having gone through this a few years ago, I could really understand her problems.

Caring for the elderly is very similar, in the acts performed...feeding, cleaning up, full responsiblity...to caring for a baby...but it is certainly bereft of the joys of the latter. With a baby, one is watching a person and a personality developing...with an elder, it is the waning of a person, of a childhood without any appeal to it. An elderly patient is often cranky and wilful, and also often complains about the caregivers to all the visitors, and sometimes, it's very hard to take.

I am taking a break for a month from the dental treatment, but will come back to get the root canal done...for the fourth (and hopefully final) time.

In the meanwhile, of course, I have tried to do as much as I can, and have thoroughly enjoyed meeting up with those friends who did make the effort to come home (alas, not all of them did!), went on wildlife trips, went to plays, and just....enjoyed being back home as well.

Well, a month in Chennai will bring me back even more appreciative of home....

But before I leave, a quick trip to Nandi Hills, with the BULBs is on for tomorrow! :)

Non-birders... please exkoos, as they say here.

We took a trip to Maidanahalli ("village of the open meadows") on

Rajyotsava Day

...it proved to be a birding bonanza! It was as if Karnataka just wanted to shower us with sightings and observations!


The day started with the usual CKMP (Crow Kite Mynah Pigeon)...but the raptor quotient went up sharply with the sighting of this

WHITE=EYED BUZZARD

in its rocky habitat:




Later, the bird soared in large circles:





Next came this

BOOTED EAGLE





( many birds sitting, standing or flying here )


...and the trip to Ramnagara to see the not-at-all common

LONG-BILLED VULTURE




came to mind, too...so, right now, you can, quite rightly, call me a bird-brain!

( List of birds on two of the trips )

I'd posted about my first photograph of the

SIRKEER MALKOHA

...and on the way back from Maidanahalli, we saw first one, and then, high up on the rocks, two near each other.

In an interesing switch, I got this FS (Foozly Shot) of the Malkoha taking off from the rock:




(I still like the image a lot.)


then I got this video of the bird in its habitat, where it's doing nothing but sitting quietly!






Photo with action, video with none...that's the way wildlife and birding goes, sometimes!

We were waiting at the watchtower in Maidanahalli for the appearance of the endangered Blackbuck...and I was looking around.

I was very tickled to see that three rhyming friends (or relatives or family, perhaps that's more likely) had visited:





When we visit a place, we need to leave our impress upon that spot...the equivalent of "Kilroy was here"....!

I must get down to posting about the variety of birds that we saw in Maidanahalli, but right now, I'm just thinking that dentists are a pain in the........teeth.

It was an amazing sight, as we returned from Maidanahalli, to find the sun setting to our right,





and the moon (nearly full) rising to our left...





In Tamizh, dusk is called "andhi sandhi koodum vELai" (the time evening and night meet". This was a beautiful meeting.

I had named our women's birding group the BULBs (Bangalore Urban Lady-Birders!), and yesterday we went to Maidanahalli (no, I will *not* call it Maidenahalli as if it is the home of the critically endangered Homo sapiens virgensis) to see the blackbuck...and on the way, lots of things made us stop and stare.

One of the most colourful was the Jewel Bug:




( the extravagantly colourful bug )


Here's an extreme closeup:





Sorry, I couldn't put down anything for size reference, but the bug would be...about the size of the first phalange of your forefinger...IF you were an amateur photographer who was five feet tall...

Have done one session of teeth-torcher, next session at 3pm...dunno HOW I am bearing this PAIN!!!

We often speak of "shedding light on the subject"...the coming of light is also associated with acquiring knowledge and dispelling ignorance. "tamasO mA jyOtirgamaya" is part of our daily prayers.

Here's the light arriving, on the sheet rock on the Ragihalli Road, in the Bannerghatta Forest area:




I experimented with shooting into the sunlight, instead of the recommended "shoot at an angle"...and am happy with the results.


( more of light from the sun )

It was shivakumar_l who showed me how he uses backlight....how, when one is using light, can that be a.....real de-light?

Insomnia seems to have become a permanent friend...but I had a great day yesterday (early morning birding, some torcher, afternoon play and a lovely time with friends) and I am looking forward to my trip to

Maidanahalli

in a few hours with

Garima

and others from the BULBs (Bangalore Urban Lady-Birders...we have co-opted some male members, such as

Rajneesh Suvarna ,

though!)


I am sitting in the dark with just one goose-necked lamp...and was musing about light and darkness. That darkness is associated with evil both in terms of the lack of colour (making it black) and lack of light. The dispelling of darkness often signifies the dispelling of gloom, despair, and anything not good.

On my way up the stairs in our apartment complex, I found that someone was celebrating a festival unknown to me (probably it was also the Tamizh festival of kArthigai, I don't know...), they had set up this little shrine outside their home with lights to dispel the darkness:





It was rather unusual to have the puja display outside the home rather than inside it...but it made a warm, appealing picture!

And then, of course, my asakiyume picture...in this one, the light is fading and yet the gathering darkness seems no portent of evil, but rather, the peace and rest that come after happiness and work well accomplished:





Sunset on a daily basis is echoed, in my mind, with the fall season, where the days draw in, there's a sense of things ripened and replete...."season of mists and fruitfulness", as Keats puts it. To some people, of course, the lesser amount of light is depressing...but to me, being a person who loves the rains and the monsoon, it's not of any negative connotation.

"and leaves the world to darkness and to me", writes the poet Thomas Grey...and the peace of that statement is tinged with melancholy, and the name of the poem is "The Elegy"!

It perhaps takes someone in a tropical country, who bears the harsh sun, to appreciate lack of light, and the dimness and coolness that accompany it.

To me, the fall, the Sisir Ritu, and the evening, are wonderful times.

Today's world has an ease of communication across the globe, unrivalled in the past. There are wires, and waves, that carry one's words anywhere. But these drongos seem to say that though we may use the wires and the very air to communicate, there's just nothing like talking to each other face-to-face!

Though the bird sightings on our Saturday trip were very sparse, I was thrilled to have a good sighting of the

SIRKEER MALKOHA




I have seen this bird once before, at Turahalli, for a very brief few seconds; this time, it was right out in the open, and right next to the road! We all got out for a few shots, and I also took this video of the bird preening:








Immediately afterwards, we saw two BLUE-FACED MALKOHAS, but they vanished in the tangled shrubbery before we could even get a proper look! That's the way birding goes....

I had a wonderful trip to Turahalli, Galibore and Ramnagara with amoghavarsha, anushsh and sharathm....here they are, shadows in the sunset:




Anush, I must say, was a very reluctant co-tripper...


I find that I seem to have forgotten all the names of the common butterflies that I used to know very well. WHAT is someone with a bad memory supposed to do? It's awful...and a little worrying.

Well, while I hunt for the id's, here's a scene that appealed to me at Galibore on the campus of

JLR






In Tamizh, those earth-moving implements are called "maN vetti" (literally, "cut the earth"). They are in between a hoe and a shovel...wonder what they are called in English? "shoe"? "hovel"? :) (LJ user="asakiyume">, those Orrible Puns were for you!)

To me...that photograph is about wood....the living wood of the tree, bearing leaves, and the dead wood of the hoes and the window shutters...

But on a lighter note, what would YOU say about that hen in the window?


Though not productive in terms of number of bird-sightings, the trip was most enjoyable...even though I slept most of the time that I was in the car, as the jet lag and the strong painkillers I'd taken for the jaw pain joined hands to knock me out!


The sunset was painted in intense colours:




And a little later:

A quick trip to the Bannerghatta National Park (around the Zoo area) with anushsh yielded such a variety of birds, starting from the tiny

LOTEN'S SUNBIRD





(thanks for the correction,

Garima !



to the

SHIKRA

that we were really thrilled!

Here the Shikra is, perched upon a eucalyptus tree:




( Read more... )

The only sad part was, I had not charged the battery of the 20D properly...so all pics are by MLC2 (SX10)!


This rock pool made a lovely picture....





More pics later....we are off to

Cauvery Wildlife
Sanctuary


area early tomorrow!

My trusty (and not yet rusty)

Canon 20D

with the

300mm lens

is charged up, ready and waiting. So, too, are my

10X42 Kestrel Meade binoculars

(alas, no longer available!)

of course, my

MLC2

and....

I am off to Bannerghatta by the first available bus tomorrow, to do my first lot of birding back home.....tralalalalala.

I want to forget the pain of the incredibly difficult treatment I have started for an abcess in my root canal, which means that the root canal is going to be re-done for the, yes, I am not kidding, FOURTH time. (My username on blogger is "molarbear"...that's why.)

The last three days have been very bad. Maintaining an establishment in India in absentia is VERY tough, particularly if one does not have obliging relatives. Fix-this and Repair-that and That's-not-working and This-went-awry chores have engulfed me in a tidal wave of trying to organize everything through a fog of lack of sleep and severe jet lag. So...my answer to it all is..get away from it all, for a little while!

I really like looking at sparrows here; I think they are very much like the Indian diaspora in this country. They are not native to the country, but have made their space here, and are thriving. They manage to survive very well, and yet, they keep a low profile for the most part; amongst the local people, but yet apart, keeping themselves to themselves, at a little distance. They are not interested in making waves or making themselves prominent, only in maintaining their lifestyles in reasonable comfort.

Indians...and perhaps other minority communities too...are the sparrows of America. And yes, I see boards in Forest Park (put up by bird lovers, no less!) which say that since sparrows are not a native species, their nests can be destroyed, and they can be shot...so sparrows are no stranger to mindless, illogical hate, either...

These two squirrels were just having fun....






This Kestrel was enjoying the sun....




OK, that's it for now, I have to run!