deponti

It's been really hectic, but I have finally found the time...it's going to be a long post,compressing two days at the Serengeti, with lots of photos (there will be one lot more with pics from Lake Manyara, with the TREE-CLIMBING LIONS)

Here's a sunrise over the Serengeti plains...




anushsh has made this his screensaver....so this is dedicated to him!


Our safari started on a high note, with this sighting of a CHEETAH, which had just killed a gazelle and was dragging it to a good place for the feast....




(Remember, I said that none of my cheetah shots are close-up or good!)


Another "typical" shot that I got was the Masai, walking for miles in the vast landscape, amongst the eternal grasses of the Serengeti...




( lots of pictures under the cut; you must have a lot of interest in wildlife, and lots of time..othwrwise, skip! )


I will wind up the Serengeti pictures with this delta image of the vulture in flight:

On the 23rd morning, we landed at Kilimanjaro (no, we couldn't see the peak from the flight because of heavy clouds) and realized that the flight on which the rest of the family (who had just finished visiting the Pyramids in Egypt) would not come in until 2 pm. So we spent our time clicking happily...some of the common birds in the area were known to us, and others proved delectably new, and our guide, Huruma, was much amused!

Let's start with one of the most common birds in Tanzania...




That's the Superb Starling, and though we didn't get tired of it by the end of our visit, as Huruma predicted, we certainly saw these birds in their thousands, all over the place! But that didn't detract one bit from their fantastically colourful, iridiscent plumage.... it shone like a satin neck-of-the-peacock...




( here are some more familiar and unfamiliar birds )

And here's a bird which I couldn't identify until our guide took a look at my photograph.

It's the BARE-FACED GO-AWAY BIRD that I talked about in my earlier post...




What a fantastic name! The bird makes a kind of "gweyyy" sound, that white travellers interpreted as "Go Away"....and why call it bare-faced when it has such a nice crest, I really don't know!


After he realized that we were both seriously interested in everything-- birds, mammals, insects, trees, the lot-- he lent us three excellent reference books on the three regions that we visited. One was the Audubon book on East Africa, and the others were books on the Ngorongoro Conservation Area, the Serengeti, and the Lake Manyara area, with special reference to the tree-climbing lions...

Oh yes, they will be posted too, soon, soon...but right now, the bare-faced go-away bird is telling me to go away from the computer and get on with the task of cooking dinner for our guests tonight (I had, indeed, forgotten that this is the season for all NRI's...Non Resident Indians, friends and relatives alike, to come visiting...a cousin from New York and a close friend from St Louis are here with their families right now.)

To whet your appetite....two Thomson's Gazelles fighting, a pride of lions (three lionesses, two adorably roly-poly cubs, and two lions) walking unconcernedly past our safari jeep, two tree-climbing lions of Manyara, ungulates by the hundreds, two ostriches doing a mating dance with an audience of two cheetahs (in the far distance, alas), a cheetah, also somewhat far away, feasting on a gazelle, a golden jackal with its cub....plus homely touches like a shrike feeding its hungry baby, Yes, I do love watching mothers and their children, no matter what the species they belong to!

It's been a phenonmenal time here in Tanzania...first at the Ngorongoro Crater, and then in the Serengeti since yesterday. We started with a superb time birding in Kilimanjaro airport while we were waiting for KM's brothers to fly in...and then as we drove into the Ngorongoro Conservation area, we started with a night sighting of a leopard so close by...and except for the rhino, I think we have sighted all the animals,birds, reptiles and other stuff one could think of...and then some....

Two things which are fantastic...the total lack of plastic in the wilderness, and the immense discipline of the wildlife trips, which means that the animals are not afraid, and do not melt away immediately (though of course some do)...we have got some phenomenal shots and videos...the highlight being a pride of lions, including two cubs, walking down the road amongst the safari vehicles, another of two Thomson's gazelle fighting in dead earnest, four types of vultures feasting on a carcass, two lionesses circling around a kill which they cannot eat because a band of baboons are trying to chase them off, a couple of ostriches doing a mating dance...with a couple of cheetahs as audience, the incredible line of migrating wildebeest stretching kilometers across the Serengeti plain....some of these are very far away, though....and the really colourful, splendiferous birds...the crocodiles and the hippos, the baboons and the vervet monkeys, the hyenas and the different kinds of jackals....

We have had hardly any sleep, because the power went down at night almost every day, and we had to recharge the camera batteries, and download the photos and videos....when we could.

At Kirawira camp, where we are now, the internet connection costs 10 USD for 15 minutes, so my next post is only going to be when I reach Dar es Salaam after the trip....

All my friends, I can do a lovely presentation on the Ngorogoro Crater, the Serengeti, and Lake Manyara (which we are going to day after tomorrow)...when I return...

Oh, Tanzania....words are just NOT adequate, will have to say it with the pictures. How happy I am that I took up photography!

And now, ladies'n'genmun, we come to some of the more unusual creatures that reside in our forests.....I must say, this time we seemed to have all of them coming over to the road to meet us!

Saying hello is the Monitor Lizard , which might remind us, sadly, of ladies' handbags:



The wiki says they are very intelligent and some species can count, isn't that amazing?

Next we come to the Pond Terrapin. At least, that's what this chap is supposed to be, but we found him on the road! I joked that he had probably left for a short walk to the nearest water body,the previous day....




At first, he was shy, but soon his head came peeping out:




Doesn't he look for all the world as if he is grinning happily?

Amazing, I googled for "pond terrapin" but the only reference I got to an Indian Pond Terrapin was an image on INW! So perhaps I have the id wrong..someone please correct me if so.

( For other forest residents, click here )

And could I close a post on the jungle without a pic of this Adonis? I had posted some pictures a while ago, from Gudgaon, where the males had just started to get their breeding plumage; on this fellow, it is in full glory:



Bandipur, a wonderful forest..I am trying to go back there again

We have many kinds of love in our culture, and Vaathsalyam is the love of a parent (particularly the mother) for the child.

Bandipur has always seemed to show me scenes of this vatsalyam more than any other wildlife sanctuary...

When we drove in to Tusker Trails, there was a snafu about our rooms, and while it was getting sorted out, the rain started pelting down too. We roamed around the property with our cameras, and I loved the sight of this mother cat with four identical kittens, one of whom she is licking over while the other suckles:




Later, as we were on safari, we had the good fortune to have this mother and child cross our path:




They both stopped at a fairly dry waterhole and the mother started vacuumming up the mud to throw on herself, while the calf suckled:




( Some More Mothers-And-Their-Young photos here )


Well, that was my mothers-and-babies post, and I thoroughly enjoyed all the time I wasted on making it! And I changed my userpic for this post because...that's MY bebby....

Hmm...first of all, I got to spend some time on the Net yesterday and had posted about my visiting our fair rajdhani, Delhi...I had to use the "date out of order" option....oh, the entries had got mixed and I had to rectify them...

And here's what I posted today:

http://bangalore.metblogs.com/archives/2007/03/karnataka_tourism_counter_at_b.phtml

Karnataka State Tourism Discouragement Corporation...

Oh well....

I have been taking some pictures but finally, KM has ALSO decided to post to INW methinks...with the result that the camera was set to CR2 (the raw format for Canon) and the CF card, of course, got quickly full! Will download the pictures, and post a few of the decent ones (birding trips to both Okhla Bird Park and Sultanpur Bird Sanctuary)...and the campus where we stayed, the Anand Farm in Gudgaon, was a beautiful place with a wealth of birds. KM has taken the CF card today...tomorrow will be my turn!

Attended a Delhi wedding which, luckily, was not as glitzy as some weddings in that city can be...

Still wondering if the trip to Delhi was worth it...until I visited the home of someone I know, and found that their 13-year-old daughter writes beautifully. I tried opening a Live Journal account for her but the broadband connection in her home was down. She does nice anime sketching, too...a very creative child, I hope to introduce her in my LJ, at least, soon.....

Another sad ending... a few days ago, I came back from a trip and eagerly went to look at the coconut palm....and found no eggs in the nest or female kite, either...and over a period of time, I realize that the eggs have probably been predated (by crows?) and the female kite has abandoned the nest....

Some of the common birds are also the most colourful...here is the Purple Moorhen, also called the Purple Swamphen , a frequent sight amongst the waterbodies in and around Bangalore:



(  Some more pics here )

Want to come on the Lalbagh walk with me, now that you have seen these common, yet lovely birds?

Yesterday sainath and I spotted these two birds:

The Golden Oriole...there were a few of these very beautiful birds flying around amongst the giant Eucalyptus trees; I have earlier seen them in a different area of the park, amongst the rain trees.



Apparently, another variety, the Black-Naped Oriole, has been sighted in Lalbagh too. I hope to be able to sight one soon....

And on one of the largest, oldest trees in Lalbagh, which is a variety of the Silk-Cotton, we found the Chestnut-Tailed Starling feeding:




Both were a delightful sight to see, and we spent far longer than we had planned, watching them.

I was going through my LJ friend's page, when I remembered the anecdote about two brothers who gave in identical essays on the topic, "My Dog". When asked why, they said, "Ma'am...we both have the same dog!"


Why did I think of this story?....well....here are amoghavarsha's pictures of the Dandeli trip

http://amoghavarsha.livejournal.com/76973.html

( Compare them with these photographs )


The fact is that, in each case, it really WAS the same bird that we were photographing! (The differences in the photographs lie in the fine job of post-processing that Amogh does.)

(I never even got to see the Eurasian Martin, and KM's shot of the Asian Paradise Flycatcher was ruined by his having the wrong settings on the camera. Otherwise they would have been here too.)

...It might have been much easier for one of us not to take the camera, and just take xeroxes of the other's photographs...!

So, to make sure I am one up, here's one photo that Amogh could NOT have taken.

Presenting the bird that loves the forests, the Taller Tick-Bitten Lens Ogler...

I seem to keep talking about the Spotted Owlets at Lalbagh, but there are plenty of other birds, especially around the water bodies (no, a water body is NOT Pamela Anderson swimming)....

Here's the Pond Heron:



( two more pics here )

Thank goodness none of you will cluck at the quality of the pictures...

Let's srart off with the clear declaration that the photographs were MUCH worse than I feared. But...for me they tell a story, so please don't mind the lack of crispness or other technical imperfections...


Here's our friend the spotted owl, who resides in Lalbagh:




( More owl pictures.... )

The last owlet we saw had a lovely background of green; but alas,my pictures haven't turned out well at all, so I will leave that one for sainath and amoghavarsha to display!

Soon there's going to be a delightful squirrel post from me, with one photograph where you have to decide if it's friendship..or sex!Aha... That got your eye, didn't it!

Thank you, Sainath, for introducing me to your spotted friends, and teaching me how to post to Picasa, to Flickr and to LJ.

Here's the update; Mrs B K has been bringing some fresh upholstery for her nest, but it doesn't seem to make a major difference to Egg A and Egg B, her to-be children....

Here she is, looking them over...



And then, off she goes on another quick trip before she can be missed:




This is the only reasonable shot I got, of both Mama and Papa together. (They are both at the nest for only fleeting seconds!)


Just waiting for the chicks to hatch....!

Jungle Lodges and Resorts are going to conduct another batch of their Naturalists' Training Program, which sainath, chirdeep_shetty, sanathreddy and I, amongst others, took last year.

( Details of the Program, Venue, Dates, Charges...here )

Having given the details, here is my take on the program.

Since the time that yathin, kalyan and others took the course (at that time it was intense inputs on a lot of fronts), it has become almost entirely birding-oriented. Mammals and flora are touched upon, and reptiles or insects are not discussed at all. The program would be of use to someone who is interested in learning the basics of bird-watching. However, what does happen is that the contacts with the other students (many of the people in my batch were committed wildlifers/birders) are quite useful. But for a birding-focused program, the charges do seem a little steep.

However, one of the major pluses would be meeting S. Karthikeyan, the Chief Naturalist of Jungle Lodges and Resorts, who will be conducting the course. Karthik has been with WWF for many years before joining JLR. But more than his professional details...his knowledge of Nature is pretty vast. Whenever, in the wildlife trips or gatherings I have attended, there has been a query about some aspect of wildlife, the answer is,usually.... "The best person for that is Karthik."

I started an egroup (still pretty active) for everyone who has taken the program. I am planning to set up an initiative for a Volunteer Program for JLR, so that any of us who have taken the course can help out JLR on a voluntary basis when the need for naturalists is very high.

My wildlife experience is inextricably tied up with the several avid wildlifers I have met. Just now when I saw sainath's post about the Grey Headed Fishing Eagle, I instantly thought of yathin...even though HE now signs himself Elephas Maximus! So I was musing..and I realize that I think of some particular fauna when I see the names of some people...let me describe the associations at least with some LJ-ers!

kalyan....the bonnet macaques of BR Hills and the Crested Serpent Eagle which he pointed out to us when we first met him in that magical place...

amoghavarsha...that rock python which he photographed..and the Forest Calottus.
sanathreddy...the crocodile....
sainath...the Spotted Owlet....
chirdeep_shetty...the dhole and the chital, the former usually hunting the latter!
kaadupapa..no, not the kaadupapa (the Slender Loris), but the elephants which he snapped in that beautiful photograph...

And so it goes...

The past few days, I have watched, riveted, as Mrs Black Kite calls each morning...and Mr BK arrives with morsels in his mouth which he lays out on the palm fronds; she comes out, eats them, and it's back to the nest for her.

By the time I rush into the other room, get the camera and bring it out on to the balcony, mealtime is over...

But today, I left the camera right on the balcony (not a wise thing to do because of the sun pouring in.) And the whole morning, the male did not appear.

So just now, Ma'am decided to go out and get a snack for herself...I guess she figured that with the sunshine on the eggs they would keep warm enough for a while. I must say, she wasn't gone long though....I wonder if she did find something to eat after the long night vigil...




But while she was gone, I thought I would let you all share the sight of the eggs...there was one earlier, now there are two...

And if you please, the sponge and towel have been accesorized by....someone's leather wallet! (You can see it in the nest). If you look at the right of the photograph you will see a green coconut as well...

Watch this space for further developments, and hope that I have the camera handy, too!

I found this delightful view of this delightful, colourful little bird amongst the photographs...I don't know if I took the picture or KM did; but looking at the detail of that little spider-web thread just next to the bird, and its clarity, I feel it might have been KM rather than me...



Sadly, we didn't get any pictures of another colourful bird on the Ganesh Gudi campus of JLR, the Malabar Trogon....

Here's a snap KM took of the Malabar Pied Hornbill...the picture has a very Japanese-painting feel to it, because of the tree and the bold curves of the bird....




Malabar Pied Hornbills are very large birds, weighing up to 4 kg sometimes; in spite of this, their flight (with a typical pattern of flap-flap-flap, glide...) is quite graceful, and the arc of their outstretched wings is so beautiful to see.

At Dandeli, this time, we were treated to a lovely family drama, more riveting than any soap opera one could see on the idiot box! Let me introduce the hero and heroine:




( The rest of the Hornbill Story...click here! )

We enjoyed this little drama so much...watching the birds and observing their behaviour is far more interesting than just spotting them!

This is the Blue-Capped Rock Thrush...well, the male (the female of course is dun-coloured and dull-looking!)...






That photo was by KM; and here's the one I took of the bright little chap, as soon as I hurriedly took the camera from my spouse ...



We found the number of birds which are bright and colourful,just amazing. And I am realizing that sharing a camera is all very well when only of us is out on a field trip; it's tough when both of us are there at the same time....my agreement with KM was, I won't use the camera if both of us are in the field at once, but I didn't always stick to that rule... I think KM is getting slowly fed up with me looking over his shoulder, not at the bird, but to see if he has finished with the camera so I can take it!

My next Dandeli-related post is going to be a long one; it is the story of Mr and Mrs Malabar Grey Hornbill; their loving billing and cooing, their nest, and the evil Mynah who tries to stake a claim to their home, and their ultimate victory....watch this space for the sensational serial story! (End of promo.)