deponti

http://bangalore.citizenmatters.in/articles/view/1543-bengaluru-photographers-to-shoot-leonid-showers

However, the title I had chosen was...Shooting Stars Shoot Shooting Stars".

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...

If

Karthik

comes, can moths be far behind?

Yesterday, he told us that this beautiful

OLEANDER HAWK MOTH

was sitting on the staircase of my apartment, so mohanvee and I went off to photograph it...





Meanwhile, he had also spotted these two...a lovely gold-and red one:





and an even prettier "pied" moth....





I guess all moths and butterflies know an expert when they see one, and consider Karthik a kind of foster moth-er....

Couldn't resist that!

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 )

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.

I left St.Louis, to come home and do some wildlife trips...but I did not realize that we were going to have our own wildlife there...





How rare would it be to have a Lion in St.Louis!

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.

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?

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!

On both my visit to Bannerghatta, and to Turahalli, Galibore, and Ramnagara, I noticed a wide variety of butterflies flitting along in their various colours. Of course, the time of day (mid-morning) was not ideal to photograph them, as that is their nectar-gathering time and so they were most restless, and would hardly settle for more than a second or two anywhere.

So of course it was the butterflies' fault that I got mediocre pictures....having allocated the blame correctly, here they are:


The

BLUE PANSY





( a list of fritillaries )


Let me end with this beautiful


BLUE-WINGED WASP





This post is dedicated to


Karthik

who is an authority on butterflies!

Update:

My NTP friends, Vikram Hiresavi, M V Shreeram, adarshraju ,Vineet, and Uma
have all, as usual, taken the trouble to help me out with the ids. :) Thank you!

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....

We stopped, arrested by the green of this paddy field:






sharathm got down to stretch his limbs





And spotted this spider






spinning her web:





I think that's a Lynx Spider and just watch the beauty of creation:

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!

These two squirrels were just having fun....






This Kestrel was enjoying the sun....




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

Wolves:






Big cats:





The geese, back here:





Monkeys (discerning ones)




(that was a packet of freeze-dried bananas)

and this Red-Tailed Hawk that roosts on an aerial right in front of Madhu's 12th storey window, and suddenly sailed past as we were walking:

premkudva recently posted that McDonald lost their claim to be the only ones to use the "mc" in front of their name! That being so, I promptly dubbed this McSquirrel when I saw him on our way home from sightseeing:



He was carefully eating the filling before going to work on the base:





Eat pizza, it will keep you bright-eyed and bushy-tailed!

On Saturday, a sudden change of plan resulted in my forgetting to take MLC2 when I went to attend the wedding; and there, I found the bride's uncle, after the ceremony, taking pictures of a huge spider with a large egg-sac. I watched it, of course, but felt bad that I couldn't take photographs.

On Sunday, however, Madhu, Kusi and I decided that rather than go to Delaware to do some hiking, we would go to the same

Wissahickon area .

And....when we reached

Valley Green Inn ,

I went over to the tree where I had seen the spider, laughing at my own idiocy in looking for the spider again...and..there she was!



Amazingly, she didn't react at all to my presence, and sat, perfectly still; I don't know if this is normal behaviour for a spider with an egg sac...butI was thankful that she allowed me the time to observe her for a while.


You can see the very large egg sac in this picture that I took ffrom the side:





Could someone tell me what spider this is? She was a little larger than a golf ball...

Update: charleshaynes has id'd it, correctly, I think, as a

WOLF SPIDER


Thank you, Charles and Debbie! :)

As a birding outing, the visit to

Creve Coeur Lake

was a washout, or rather, a rainout...but the place is so beautiful, that while D cycled and A ran, with GD in a jogging stroller, I ambled around and enjoyed myself very much indeed!

Here's the sign which explains the origin of the name of the lake:





Here's the dripping springs:




(and they weren't dripping only because of the rain...!)

( if you have the patience.... )

I finally left the lake to its own beauty, and brought away this image of a heron-scape: