It's my turn to post another "where is it" picture....this one's much easier (and of course, a far fouler photograph!) than kalyan's though! Here's the Draco or the Flying Lizard in the Salim Ali bird sanctuary in Thattekad, Kerala:





Here it is, after it's scuttled a bit around the tree-trunk, just look at the beauty of its neck-fan:




And a view of another lizard, the following morning:







Uploading more pictures...will get around to posting soon..but right now, things are hectic and very mixed-up...

Have you ever wondered what snoops have to eat?






And do you know that I really, really, DID see penguins in Kodaikanal? Here they are:







The camera never lies!... But it need not show you the entire back of the Volvo bus where the birds appeared!

It was fun watching bird behaviour rather than looking for new birds; and here are some more photos, which I warn you are of variable quality (it's all the birds' fault of course.)


Here's the VELVET-FRONTED NUTHATCH; they are quick, restless birds and it is very difficult to capture them as they flit about on the tree-trunks, now in sight, now not....







( more birds...click here )

This Mynah (the COMMON MYNAHS and the JUNGLE MYNAHS seem to be interbreeding....I see a lot more of the latter in urban areas now) was busy getting in some home decor!




That, and the PIED BUSCHAT GREBES (DABCHICKS) that I posted about earlier , comprise the birds that I was able to photograph; the ORANGE-AND-BLACK FLYCATCHER and the LAUGHING THRUSH did oblige me by showing themselves, but late in the evening when I had left the cameras at home and was just walking around the lake.

Feels great to be back home though I am dealing with a flooded bathroom. Our friend went to have a shower at 5.30am, before leaving to take the flight to Mumbai....and the bathroom, in true Murphy style, developed a huge leak from the pipes.... AND the control valve, which would shut off the water to the bathroom, is also broken) and a mass of contusions and bruises from three falls in Kodaikanal (alas, I wish they were waterfalls, but they are my-body falls to the pavement or road!)

Looking at my friends' list in between the cooking and the firefighting, er, waterfighting,.... and what a lot of interesting stuff there seems to be, to read and digest....I do miss LJ when I am out of town, though I can do without email or anything else...and I do miss being able to post my pictures "as and when"...I don't want to sit in some parlour, so I end up having to wait till I get home.

Here are two birds that I loved watching in Kodai. One was a mother PIED BUSHCHAT ...here she is, flying off from the rubber tree near her cottage to find food...






I enjoyed watching her and her baby, very near our cottage; here's the collage of the bird, the baby asking for food, the mother going off to get it, and coming back to say, in typical "Mommy" style, "now open your mouth, for goodness' sake!"




And here's the LITTLE GREBE...a single family, with two chicks, which managed to find food even amongst the crowds of tourists on the lake.

Here, first, are the beautiful babies, swimming along...





Here's the adult, catching a fish on the lake, you can see the war going on:





And here's the successful predator:





And here's the adult with the baby nearby, I posted this to INW with the title, "Put breakfast on our bill"....



I managed to see both the Kodaikanal-famous birds.....ORANGE-AND-BLACK FLYCATCHER and the LAUGHING THRUSH on the last evening, quite close to the lake, but when I had no camera with me, and to use the golf jargon that I have been exposed to for the past week, that's par for the course!


Next, the "paravai kAvadi" (the penance of the bird) festival at the Kodai mAriamman temple....must upload the video to Flickr now....

One of the things I have noticed in the town is that though there is a large lake, with plenty of fish, and lots of tall trees, I have not seen any PARIAH KITES, BRAHMINY KITES, nor have I seen any raptors, even 10km away from the town. I find this very intriguing. Is it something to do with the altitude of the place? Or is it because garbage is cleaned up well?

The lake is also not prolific for birds, because of the presence, in large numbers, of Homo touristus; I am now intimate friends with the two POND HERONS and the two WHITE-BREASTED KINGFISHERS that swoop down on the fish.

I also got shots of the single family of LITTLE GREBES (the two young ones are awfully cute, scuttering along the surface of the lake behind their mother, with little cries!), and the mother grebe is a great fisher...she manages her food-finding in spite of all the boats on the lake!

And the first day, I got some not-nice (yes, typical deponti) shots of the VELVET-FRONTED NUTHATCH on the trees near the lake, and then couldn't sight them for sometime...and yesterday, after a heavy shower of rain, they were all around our garden, climbing up and down the tree trunks as they looked for insects! They are very pretty birds....

And of course, there are plenty of WHITE-BROWED WAGTAILS and RED-WHISKERED BULBULS, all over the place...

I met up with a birder, and hope to visit his guest house today, and see if I can find some more birds. But given the huge crowds in Kodaikanal at this time, I am happy to have got even these shots of the few birds that I have seen!

And yesterday, I walked aroud the beautiful golf course that abuts the Palani Hills forest area...and was lucky to see a GAUR, but no one else seemed happy to see it as it was crossing the road and blocked up the traffic! Several drivers complained loudly about the "kAttu mAdu" (forest cattle) that are nuisances to the traffic on the road....sigh.

The pictures? I will wait to post them when I return home....as I said, it isn't worth sitting in a poky internet parlour when I can be out cycling or walking around. People are as fascinating as birds....!

Caught this Bulbul, all wet after the rain, having got its lunch....



The insect, too, must have come out after the showers....

Update: sorry for the boo-boo, now you can see it properly...I will be going to the parlour again tomorrow (this is on a friend's Reliance card!) so perhaps more entries tomorrow....hope not too many of you have posted interesting thoughts and pics!

Here's an article I really enjoyed reading in the Sunday Herald, which is the Sunday supplement of the Deccan Herald:

http://www.deccanherald.com/Content/May182008/sundayherald2008051768487.asp

All these people post their photographs regularly on INW

But Shiva, especially, has been very, very helpful to me about photography and post-processing (though I have decided not to do much of post-processing on my photos.)...and this was well before he met me personally.


However, Shiva had this comment to make:

"The press guys have messed up a lot with the content....
something and all they have written -- compared to what we told them....'Bar headed geese @ TGHalli'... what the neck band ?!?!? It was supposed to be Somanathpura!"

Accurate reporting or not....great going, guys! :)

Had a somewhat hectic weekend, with the JLRNTP, an excellent photography workshop by kalyan and the monthly QuizFamilies meet (which this time was a lunch quiz)....I never missed being off the net, but one thing I do have to catch up on is...friends' posts on both LJ and Blogger...and there is so much of interesting stuff that I feel frustrated that I don't have the time to consider them and write commments. Me, I love to talk!

So instead of my opinions or more words...here's a nice picture of Mr Bill and Ms Coo, on a balcony somewhere in my area....

I read somewhere once, "How nice if we were oviparious instead of viviparous...if we wanted to, we could have children, if we didn't want to, we could have breakfast!"

Well, since That Mammal is still grimly determined that I will never see its visage (or even a twitch of its tail), let me share all the other wonderful sights of Bandipur.... Here are some of the birds (all pretty common, no Darwinian discoveries here!) that I saw.


Very common at this time of the year is the BLACK-RUMPED FLAMEBACK WOODPECKER (Dinopium benghalense...dunno why it's called "Din-OPIUM"!!), which can be seen flying about, and boring the tree-trunks (you can see a small piece falling to the ground from its work, if you look carefully!)






Also fairly easy to sight were the CRESTED SERPENT EAGLEs; this one was sitting not too far away for a brief while:







( more...if you like... )


We did see several other birds, but these were the photographs I got! As always, the mammal sightings were great too, but that's going to be another post....

I go with a heart full of hope (and greed, yes...everyone ELSE has seen the SIT)...to Bandipur, and of course, how many SIT's do I see (remember, chirdeepshetty saw 5 once)...how many? Think of a number, subtract it from itself, and that will be the answer....

Focus doesn't help. Nothing ever helps.

But what DOESN'T help at all is helpful phone calls every now and then, full of suppressed (and not-too suppressed) glee, asking, "Saw any tigers?" "What happened?" "Seen anything?" and so on...Amogh meeting me at 4.30pm and saying, "Well, I might as well go home now, there are going to be no more tiger sightings now that you are here", swiftly-hidden smiles from all and sundari...I have taken to grunting now instead of replying! :)

I may not be the only one never to have seen an SIT (er, that's south Indian Tiger, if anyone has not yet known of My Quest), but I am certainly the funniest one. Even Swarna Venkat, who had never seen one, came over last week, and sighted one...

Oh well. But everything ELSE in Bandipur is ALWAYS awesome. And speaking of grunting..... here's a lovely conversation I saw happening between two WILD BOAR:


"Hist! hist! You heard the latest? It seems Piggy and Porky were....."






"Hmmm...wait...sniff-sniff-sniff...."






"You STINK!! you rotten PIG!!!!Just stay AWAY from me!"





"Hmm...this solitude is WILDly BOARing....."





and to end this post on a beautiful note (there will be more posts about the other birds and mammals, never fear!)...here's another portrait:






More to follow, but off now to take care of other stuff....!

Here's my favourite shot from Bandipur ....







Bandipur has always been one of my favourite areas...and what once used to be "Prakruthi" restaurant has now morphed into the Bandipur property of JLR . Almost every room there has a beautifully painted wildlife mural .

Well, since I can do a bit of "swalpa adjust maadi" with itsalouwelylife and her UK friend, I am executing a sneak to Bandipur tomorrow.

Alas, this time I am not going just to see what I can see. Usually, that's what I do. And I come back happy with whatever I saw, but never a glimpse of any stripes.....Then, I was told by someone, when I said that I had never seen a tiger in south India: "You lack focus. You are too happy and contented with what you see, so you will never see a tiger."

OK, this time, focus, focus, focus. Ever since chirdeepshetty went to take up a 2-month voluntary assignment as a naturalist there, he has apparently seen nothing but tigers. They are crawling out of the woodwork....he posted to the JLRNTP egroup about sighting 5 of them recently. And whoever has gone there from the NTP this past week....Praveen, Avinash, Amogh...have been also been doing nothing else.

So having once cancelled my train ticket for today, I went back and bought a bus ticket for tomorrow, and I am FOCUSSSSSSING as I go off. Wish me luck everyone. I have a great fear that these other tiger-sighting characters are swifty exhausting the April 2008 Tiger-Sighting Quota before I arrive there, and will do the usual "The tiger was sighted HERE yesterday" or "Look! Tiger Scat!" (That's a polite and technical way of referring to tiger shit tiger waste-products.) I even had one naturalist who enthused, "OH! It's FRESH and STEAMING!!!" as if it was a fragrant breakfast dish of idlies that he had found.

I don't want tiger claw marks, I don't want pug marks. I don't want to listen to other people's tiger-sighting stories. I WANT MY OWN TIGER SIGHTING IN SOUTH INDIA. This means YOU, you tiger hiding in the forests of Bandipur. Come on out you coquette, I want to see if you actually do exist, or are a piece of these other people's fevered imaginations....

Want to see some of my Bandipur posts?

click on this

adarshraju told me he hopes I will sight one. That was nice of him.

He also told Anush not to go with me as anyone with me would never see a tiger. That is NOT nice of him. I am deciding whether to smile at him or growl at him the next time I see him....

I do love Bandipur, tiger or no tiger. But I would prefer tiger to no tiger... Sigh.

Can you imagine, me not posting about an outing for several days...but miracles do occur. But now you have not been spared, so here it is...


I was chatting with prashanthks and we suddenly decided that we would go to the Valley School area to do some birding. Kuku's bird pics have been getting to be very good lately, with his new camera. vidya_m_82 was unable to come along as she attends music classes on Saturday mornings ( a blessing, as it turned out later...not that she attends music classes, but that, having a class, she didn't come along...) And whoever I did remember to call was either not willing to get up in the morning, or not free to come. (As always, I remembered several friends later that I *could* have called!) So it was just anushsh, Kuku, and me...it boded well, however, that one of us had a nice bird-sounding nickname!

6 am stretched into closer-to-6.30 am as two of us had a lovely EMC (Early Morning Coffee; does two of us having it make it EMC square? cackle, cackle) at Park View, the little eatery near my home, and off we went.


I must say, the birds in the Bangalore area also seem to get up rather late. No dawn chorus here....it was about 7.00am by the time we saw a lot of bird activity. Of course let's include the CKPM (Crow Kite Pigeon Mynah) in the list right at the beginning....well, frankly, sometimes the behaviour of even these common birds is fascinating...

The next bird to catch our eye was the PIED BUSHCHAT...this lousy shot is the only one that I have, but this is MY blog, so TTS (Truly Terrible Shots) are perfectly OK. ..why all these birds are always behind leaves and other stuff, when they seem to happily come out into the open and pose for other photographers, is beyond me.





As we walked along, Anush suddenly spotted this ORIENTAL HONEY BUZZARD amidst all the foliage....it's a dark morph:




Before I could take a second shot, the bird was off, behind all the trees where we could not see it any more. But it was a great sighting by Anush.


Then I sighted this bird for the first time. A couple of them were skulking around and at first I thought I was seeing the RUFOUS TREEPIE again...but no, it was the BLUE-FACED MALKOHA...



( more about the day... )

I finally got into my flat,and spent a happy time looking over the photographs of the morning, and here's my last picture of a PLAIN TIGER (Let no one now say that I have not seen a Tiger in south India!) on a LANTANA bush:




The Valley School area is just amazing for birds, I guess, at any time of the year!

Some of the people I invited called for the Devanarayadurga trip pleaded off saying they were busy, and apparently (from their blogs) they have gone off to other birding destinations. Humph. I think there is this whole big snootiness about not going with a "less experienced" birder, or going with a "more experienced" birder.... and also going with someone who will "have more sightings" as someone helpfully explained to me. Also, I have slowly come to notice that when these others go birding/wildlifing, I don't get calls from THEM, and only see by their blogs where they have been.


There is only one birder who has continued to call me once in a while to accompany hem/hir.

Oh well, I called all of them with good intentions (which is what the pathway to hell is paved with.)

Note to myself: don't invite all and Sundari next time.

I am truly struggling with an internet connection that is like the Sardarji's car turn-indicator (someone asked him, "I will switch on the indicator, let me know if it's working," and his reply was, "It's working,it's not working, it's working, it's not working....)..it comes and goes and comes and goes and a post that should take a few minutes has taken HOURS. But I *will* be victorious and make the post yet....


This is all about the non-birding and wildlifing part of the trip to Devarayanadurga, which I have already posted about. I want to put on record the places that we went to. Here's the first place on this Karnataka signboard:




( all about the places in Devarayanadurga, and our TV appearance, under the cut )






So those are the places, and you already know the birding and the spotting that we did while we roamed over the place....

Update: the clip by Kasturi Channel is also apparently airing regularly....after Avinash called me to say it had been broadcast, I also had a call from someone else, thanking me for choosing the Mungaru Malhe song!

It was a day where all the senses were fully engaged, at Devarayana Durga (Phonetically, dEvarAyana durgA...durgA means 'fort'.) The Devarayanadurga State Forest (DDSF) area is one of the most beautiful I have seen, in the District of Tumkur, which is also home to the the endangered Slender Loris and the Blackbuck . The awe-inspiring rock formation, and the variety of fauna and flora that can be found, made me decide to visit the place.

I have already talked about the macaque antics, and will be describing the places and the landmarks of Devarayanadurga in a later post. Here is what Nature shared with us that day:


As we walked along the track into the forest area, Seshadri, who is a good tracker, spotted these marks at our feet:






( lots more pictures (including the sandals, Mamta!) if you click here )


But...smell WAS a major feature of the beauty of the day. Throughout the woods, the WILD JASMINE spread its heady scent, attracting honey bees as well as delighting us:







And the SAMPIGE/CHAMPA trees bloomed and sent their scents through the jungle, too. The clean smell of EUCALYPTUS, the fruity smell of the FIGS, the general smell of the greenery...

Indeed, a day that feasted our senses, as we saw, smelt, heard and touched many things...and then, of course, we enjoyed the samosas, kachoris, buttermilk and coffee that I had brought along, and the soak-and-eat "avalakki" that KKI had brought...and in the rising heat, every mouthful of water was a great treat, as well.

We had a hearty laugh as soon as we entered, for Seshadri pointed out to a yellow-and-black animal sitting on the road in the far distance. "Tiger!" he cried; and we looked, only to realize that he was pulling a fast one on us...it was a dog! mamtanaidu then had us in splits by explaining that she was instantly ready to run away!

"What sort of naturalist are you, to run in the *opposite* direction from a tiger sighting?" we teased her. Then it occurred to me, probably a very smart one, to run off and leave us to the tender mercies of the tiger! Mamta, you are not going to hear the last of this for a long time! And the irony is, Mamta just adores snakes, and wants to become a herpetologist...snakes OK, stripes not OK! :)))

One of the fauna that kept us endlessly entertained at Devarayanadurga was the Bonnet Macaque, which we call the common monkey....

We started by seeing them with their fur aglow in the early morning light....




Even a sleepy yawn looked beautiful:





( several monkey tricks if you click )

With these antics, one never knows the time goes! But the rest of our sightings were fantastic too...if EVER this internet connection (no, premkudva no loose connections, I wish that were the case!) allows me to post pics to Flickr and post to LJ....

I spent a wonderful day with fellow naturalists-- from the NTP, namely mamtanaidu and anirudhc, and Kiran Immidi (a friend of sainath's),Arun, and Sheshadri, who is really knowledgeable about birds and mammals, and was fantastic at id-ing tracks...he id'd leopard, boar, peacock,civet, and hare tracks for us..... and in the Devarayanadurga State Forest area, in Tumkur.

A detailed post will follow when this four-letter word foul internet connection allows me to post my pics (I got some nice ones!) to Flickr, but these I *was* able to upload, and I couldn't wait to post them.


We saw two CRIMSON ROSE butterflies mating....





Then, as they mated, they flew into the air, and the butterfly on ...er..the top did all the flying; then they landed on another plant not far from us, and we rushed to get that....





Later, we also saw dragonflies doing the same thing, but I couldn't get photographs.

There are, however, pics of leopard pugmarks along with a peacock's, various raptors, wild jasmine, the scent of which was a heady accompaniment to us the entire day, and lots and lots more....

Sorry,this video was put up yesterday; I only got to see it today.






Isn't that amazing....?

Karthik had told me that he would be free this weekend, so I tried to organize an outing; the weather was not very predictable, so he said that rather than Manchinabele, which was much further away, we should go to Lalbagh, where if it rained, we could do some id'ing of hot idlis and coffee at any nearby Darshini...

We were a round (well, none of us are ROUND, really, but...) dozen...Karthik the NTP Guruji, and the NTP members were, in alphabetical order, Adarsh,Anjali,Geeta,Pallavi,Prasanna,Vittal, and me; and then there were, also in alphabetical order, Vittal's son Adu (it should be Jayaditya, but I want to put him first!),Vittal's friend and potential NTP-taker Girish, Nisarg, whom I have met at various birding and wildlife locations, and Pallavi's husband Preetam, who just took Sudhir Shivaram 's course on photography, and was there to try out all the newly-learned stuff....


(  LOTS of pics if you click, or you could skip! )

A lovely weekend, spent with a lot of friends...what could be nicer?

The 17th of March was a landmark birthday for KM...yes, he (I can't believe it!) turned 60. When I see him, I still see the 28-year-old whom I married, so I keep having to remind myself that 32 years have passed in the blink of an eye...

In our community, a 60th birthday is celebrated as a second wedding, with the husband actually tying a fresh "thAli" for the wife....but since we hardly have any family members nearby, he was rather adamant that he didn't want a "fuss" made over his birthday; he does not celebrate birthdays in general, and couldn't see why there should be a departure this time. But I secretly asked my sister-in-law to come over from Chennai. And then, out of the blue, he said, "Shall we go to B R Hills that day?" and, truly delighted, I rushed to comply. I made the booking at JLR, and we were all set to leave at 5am.

At 4.30am, he said he had a sore throat and didn't want to go! But at 9am, when he got up looking quite OK, I insisted that we should go...and certainly, it turned out into a memorable trip, even though just for a day!

We reached the K.Gudi (Kyathadevararyana Gudi if you want to twist your poor tongue into knots be precise ) Camp of JLR at about 3pm and this too, turned into a mini NTP meet, with Nahar, R Narayan and G S Narayan all being there...and yours truly of course.) Nahar had organized a lovely tree-planting ceremony for KM, and sampige (champa,magnolia) saplings were planted...I do hope they grow and thrive!


As usual, all lousy pics are to be excused as documentation...


Here's the sign for our destination, with that wonderfully-well designed Karnataka logo on top:





Here's Mr Tree-Planter himself:





( see several pictures,including one of a leopard taken on my S3IS, under the cut )


Though there were just 2 safaris, and one ended in pouring rain, it was still a most amazing trip!

I close with this picture of the colours that run riot in the hills right now, with the new leaves of spring:






B R Hills...Beautiful, Rapturous Hills! :)