A Jackal Story

 How do i put those experiences in words?
 A feeling that i get when an animal jumps out of a nearby shrubs and disappears into the vast forest leaving back that death silence behind! You got to be there to feel those goose bumps you would get !! Such secret unseen life of these creatures compels me to discover more about them. We could learn a lot about them if we could roam in the dense forests like nomads. Of course we are not in that era anymore, to roam around a dense forest with out forest department's permission.

 Here is an interesting story which could possibly picture such an experience. As usual, several rounds of chit chats were done in the early morning, gradually we were losing it. Felt bored to see such silence, several times i stopped my bike and glanced around, nothing not a damn thing moved around, summer is a hard season for the wild life. Forest seemed lifeless till i noticed an animal which was similar to a dog, relaxing on a rock! It was a Jackal.

With in a second jackal noticed us too. Clock started ticking in my mind (funny how i always start estimating how much time left to take picture of an animal expecting that it will run away soon). I was right, it felt uncomfortable to see us, "the stalkers". It got up. i noticed its milk filled breast! started imagining things like capturing its pup's images near its den ( :P ).

IT RAN AWAY.

                            The moment when it started noticing us.

Lantenas did what it could to resist us from entering into forest, but in vain. As we passed the shrubs, i saw a clean jungle which was 'meant to be' place for wildlife. Was very happy that i found something that day and we settled down with camouflage tent like structure hoping to see that jackal again ( with its pups :P ) Hours passed.. I woke up! from a hour long sleep, felt lost and scared my self for a while.
As always fantasies doesn't come true, we came out of that forest portion with nothing.

 O boy! that dog which was following us from the previous village started chasing the jackal out of that forest portion. I had thought that jackal left that portion as we entered it. surprised!!  remembered Poorna Chandra Tejaswi's explanation about the jungle and wildlife's behavior.

 All these happened in seconds, it left us speechless for a while, we just smiled at each other after the forest resumed its death silence.

PS: please do not mail me asking high resolution pictures, as i have less reach with my 300mm lens, these are low resolution cropped pictures.

Shot with Canon EOS 60D and Sigma 70-300mm telephoto.

  © srivathsa.s
  The photographs that i publish in this blog are copyrighted.

Spectacled Cobra ( juv.)

This beautiful juv. spectacled cobra was rescued near bannerghatta road.

rescued spectacled cobra 

Nothing much to say about the post folks, stay tuned to my blog for more updates.

Special thanks to Deepak Jayaprakash, the snake expert.

  © srivathsa.s
  The photographs that i publish in this blog are copyrighted.
  Contact me for full resolution pictures. srivathsaaa@gmail.com.
  Indian wildlife photography.

Birding at Hebbal lake,Bangalore

  Let me tell you about hebbal lake first. It was created by kempegowda way back in 1537. The park is maintained under public-private partnership and the management allows birdwatchers and photographers freely between 6.30 AM to 9.30 AM without any restrictions. So its a very good place for amateurs to learn.

 The habitat is favoured by many species of birds such as the Spot-billed Pelican, Eurasian Spoonbill, Shoveller, Pintail, Garganey, Little Grebe, Coot and Spot-billed Duck. We can also find sandpipers and other waders as well as Purple Moorhens, Purple Herons and Grey Herons in the shallow zone.

Ashy prinia

  Inside the park we can easily spot pale billed flower pecker, parakeets,ashy prinia, great-tit, white eye, kingfisher,tailor bird and all species of sun birds.With a standard zoom lens we can easily take good pictures. Birds inside the park are not at all shy, with little bit of patience we can get close up pictures, these pics are shot with sigma 70-300mm lens without any tripods.

female sun bird

 Make sure that you visit on weekdays to skip weekend photographer crowd, if you want to get suggestions from others, visit on weekends and feel free to talk to others, most of them are kind enough to help the beginners and they will share their tricks and techniques.

Male sun bird

After few visits you will get to know where to wait for, to spot particular species, there are many bird nests inside the park and if you are lucky enough to get the pictures of birds with hatchlings you can walk out of the park proudly with bunch of fabulous pictures. Hebbal lake is noteworthy for bird watchers.

pale billed flower pecker

  Stay tuned for my next post which includes water birds from hebbal lake.

  © srivathsa.s
  The photographs that i publish in this blog are copyrighted.
  Contact me for full resolution pictures. srivathsaaa@gmail.com.
  Indian wildlife photography.

Leopard

 This photo shoot was very special to me,it was my first DSLR camera and it was my first wild cat sighting in my life. I now own a canon 60d by the way.
It was a lucky day, perhaps a very lucky one. But i did not know how to operate my first DSLR camera properly! yes, believe me i wasted half of the time setting the exposures in the manual mode. Just try to imagine the situation,probably the leopard was irritated to see me struggling with my camera.
 Anyhow i had a fine 8-10 minutes to shoot this magnificent beast, till a group of  Langurs drove the leopard crazy and it just disappeared in to the woods.

  This is the very first photo that i took when the jeep driver spotted the leopard and stopped the vehicle close enough to get shot like these. Its a magical experience to see the beast in the wild with soothing silence around. According to forest guards this beauty is approx 2 years old.

 Leopard seemed surprisingly cool when we stopped our vehicle and i was the one to become all nervous. It was a very good experience.

leopard getting irritated by langurs

Soon a gang of langur monkeys arrived  towards us and made the situation worse, above pic was the moment when leopard spotted the langurs. I don't know why langurs do that, the leopard was just relaxing at that time and it had not intention of hunting i guess. Soon it got irritated and tried to change the spot and it did not help anything to stop langurs from screaming.

some of the pictures are cropped, as my lens was not reaching the leopard fully. you know as they say nothing is sufficient to shoot wildlife.

leopard

It disappeared into the forest, before that, it gave a glance towards us, like saying good bye. It was magical, blew my mind right away. My mind was like "oh man!! wonderful, this is my life i belong here, who cares about my engineering degree? ". Who would have thought such experience could happen by bunking the classes for a whole week! totally worth it.... 

A final good bye from the cat

 © srivathsa.s
 Wildlife and artistic photographs that i publish in this blog are copyrighted.
contact me for full resolution pictures. srivathsaaa@gmail.com.
Indian wildlife photography.

Malabar Pit Viper

 Malabar pit viper and My first experience with a venomous snake.

When i took my new canon s5is camera, i was 16. I had the craze to travel in search of nice shots. But i had never took a photo of snakes before this incident.

One day we planned a trekking from kemmangundi hill station to Hebbe falls which is scenic 7 km trekking route. After 3 hours we reached the falls which was amazing(see the last pic). Like most of us will do, i gave my camera to one of my friend and asked him to take a picture of me in front of the falls,and claimed on a rock. Few seconds later i noticed something odd and looked down, there it was, ready to strike my bare feet!!!

A SNAKE!!! IT WAS MALABAR PIT VIPER!!!

Man! that was the longest 2 sec in my life, i experienced my heart pounding like crazy, my mouth was a dry desert, to save my very life i jumped into the water which was the right and only thing that i could have done to save myself. Medical help was/is a dream in such places.
Everyone rushed into that place, scared snake tried to escape like it didn't do anything to me. But it couldn't escape from my curiosity, i picked up a stick and picked it up on that and started to take photographs. This one is the first.

Malabar pit viper

 Though i did not know it was a venomous snake. I did not wanted to take risk and did not enrage the snake as the people in natgeo will do.So after few minutes it seemed like it was getting irritated so i let it go.

They are found exclusively in Western ghats, they are mostly inactive during day. Nocturnal and found on the rocks near streams. Malabar pit vipers have heat sensing organs(they are called heat sensing pits) in their head, which helps them to hunt the prey even in the dark. They are slow moving snakes but strikes very quickly (tested!).Amazing creature and one of the gem of the Western ghat's crown.

Here is another picture of malabar pit viper that i took in Agumbe.

malabar pit viper

 This is the falls where i had a wonderful opportunity to take these pictures.Unforgettable moment in my life.

hebbe falls

 The snake was on a rock, somewhere situated in the bottom right in the above pic 
After searching the snake in the web i got to know it was venomous(was feeling very proud) and since then am very interested to take photos of these beautiful creatures.

 They are dangerous creatures to play with, in some places of India u couldn't get treatment if u got bitten by a venomous snake,so know your limits and be responsible when you have a chance like this.


 © srivathsa.s
 Wildlife and artistic photographs that i publish in this blog are copyrighted.
contact me for full resolution pictures. srivathsaaa@gmail.com.
Indian wildlife photography.

yellow footed green pigeons

  Yellow footed green pigeons or yellow legged green pigeons are found all over the subcontinent, mostly in thick forests. These green pigeons feed on many kinds of fruit, i would say they are mostly dependent on ficus or fig trees.
  One day i found a fig tree full of ripen fruits near a village and decided to wait there to take photos of birds which comes from the forest areas near by. Few hours later i saw two green birds feeding on the tree and that was the very first time i saw a green pigeon! I was stunned with its beauty , its purple eye was amazing.

female yellow footed green pigeon

  On the very next day i visited the same tree and found them again,they were regular to that tree in the morning time. In the early morning, green pigeons are often seen sunning on the tops of emergent trees in forest areas so finding them is very easy if u have keen observation.They build delicate nests in the thick trees for reproduction.

male yellow footed

  Massive destruction of fig trees for widening of road or for other development purposes leads to the loss of habitat for these kind of birds. Even though they are widely spread across india, am quite uncomfortable saying they are "least concerned"  rather i would say they are "nearly threatened". Saving fig trees benefit many such birds including hornbills and other threatened species.

 © srivathsa.s
 Wildlife and artistic photographs that i publish in this blog are copyrighted.
contact me for full resolution pictures. srivathsaaa@gmail.com
Indian wildlife photography. 
  Return to home here, Indian wildlife photography.

Indian Macaque

what was this male macaque thinking?
 Scroll through the blog you will get to know.
    

 

  Any rocky mountainous place with few tourists, there they are, macaque monkeys. 
For some tourists they are nuisance. Most of the time they steal food for their living in those places. But i enjoy taking   pictures of them. They actually respond like humans while taking photographs.

 Once i went to see shivanasamdra falls which is nearer to bangalore( about 100kms), fabulous place by the way. I got the opportunity to observe their behaviors closely. A dominant male(in the above pic) was heading a group. I followed them and i was very happy that i was getting good pictures of them ,suddenly a monkey grabbed the potato chips i was eating, yeah they eat anything that they encounter. Snails to lays.

Group head was sitting alone silently for a while (above pic) after few min this happened(below pic).

 Group head was mating one of the female in the group.I rushed to that place as it was rare scene and took some pictures of it thinking, in 4 to 5 months there may be a new member to that family.offsprings/younger monkeys are the center of attraction in the family. All the females take care of the baby even if they are not the birth mothers, they bond each other,similar to humans. Males protect the family from other group of monkeys.that could be a violent scene. They even fight to death in such situations.

© srivathsa.s
 Wildlife and artistic photographs that i publish in this blog are copyrighted.
contact me for full resolution pictures. srivathsaaa@gmail.com
Indian wildlife photography blog. 

wood spider

  Yes, it is a wood spider. I was watching a documentary about Indian wildlife, there was some information about these creatures. surprisingly there are no articles in wiki.  

  These wood spiders form the web between plants  or trees in much open space. They are found in many bright colours, that makes the most scared creature beautiful. These spiders are intelligent, and chooses the perfect location to feast bugs.  

These spiders covers the victim with web and hangs it. Surprisingly they are not threatened by birds.
U can find these in and around madikeri,bhadra,bandipur  forests etc..

© srivathsa.s
These wildlife photos that i publish in this blog are copyrighted.
contact me for full resolution pictures. srivathsaaa@gmail.com

spiders

 Gigantic webs that are built between trees !!  and the spiders that could be spotted even from the the distance of 50 meters!!
yeah am talking about spiders found in bhadra forest. That's how big they are!! These spiders are really big , some of these can oversize your palm. I tried very much to gather information about these fabulous spiders but i dint get any!! If u know any info please share with me. Help me to extend this post.

Spiders were mostly in dense forest areas. I managed to get these picture in macro mode. Some of the spiders were upside down which made me to use manual focusing and even glares behind the spiders can be seen because of that(in below pictures).

 Mostly these spiders rely on butterflies and such insects for the food. These spiders are not seen in dry seasons that much.
Its really amazing to see a spider building a web between the trees. Man! these made me very curious about mother nature. The story goes 6 to 7 years back when my friend had got his 2 wheeler. We used to travel a lot in the weekends we started to visit bhadra forest which  was about 20 to 30kms from our town. That was amazing  " a real silence.. sometimes chirping of some colorful birds and these gigantic spider webs by the side of the mud road. Cloudy days with mansoon showers made this place magical. I was amazed by the size and color of these spiders. From that day i started observing more and more while i was in forest".
those observations helped me to trace such  things to photograph.
Sometimes i think such observations are needed in photography. Buying costly cameras and riding in safari jeeps wouldnt help.

  I'l post more pictures of the spiders in few days. Leave some comments that would help. thank u.


© srivathsa.s
These wildlife and artistic photographs that i publish in this blog are copyrighted.
contact me for full resolution pictures. srivathsaaa@gmail.com

Green vine [continued]

Well, this is the continued part of the previous green vine post[if u havent read it yet ,pls go thru' the link green vine ]  Here is some more information about the snake.

 You can see how the snake is reaching the another branch ,its just awesome. Hardly it bends.

Since it is green in color the preditors are comparatively less. Mainly preditors are eagles, hawks, and peacocks. As i've seen, this snake's movement is different from the others. The whole weight of its body will be balanced in the tail and bending of the body is really less,so you would feel something much difference in the movement.

 Eggs are laid on the ground. There may be cases of delayed fertilization, it may much time to get fertilize the egg after mating.
As i told i was bitten by this snake, after few shots i felt my finger was swelling and we went to a doctor and he gave me some antiboitic injection and told me to be less adventures lol.
expect more posts folks.

© srivathsa.s
These wildlife and artistic photographs that i publish in this blog are copyrighted.
contact me for full resolution pictures. srivathsaaa@gmail.com

GREEN VINE

    Green vine, the most beautiful snake i have ever seen. Green vines are mildly venomous and active during day. It highly depends on the camouflage,as they uses it as transport medium. The snake stretches its whole body to reach the highest point and it can almost stretch up straight without any support. The snake is least seen on the ground which makes very difficult to find out.

One day we were out in the jungle searching for birds, we noticed some unusual moments in a low level tree and we kept observing it for a while ( its really hard to find out) and we noticed something moving around  and we went there to check in. We saw a beautiful snake which was stretching its whole body to move around.

                                                               green vine

They are very thin and it can grow upto 1.5 to 2 meters. The body is aerodynamic. The snake feeds on Frogs,lizards and even birds sometimes. It goes to the highest point and uses its binocular vision to hunt. And almost i cannot forget this one because that was a first snake bite in my life. My friend told its not venomous( actually he meant slightly venomous), I was like too much excited about it.  I took some photos for a while. And i wanted to take some macro shots, so i leaned towards it and started to take snaps, suddenly it got annoyed and gave a nasty bite. and then it started itching, we went back to see doctor, that was another story to remember.

There is a stupid myth in parts of southern India, that the species uses its pointed head to blind its human victims. Actually its behaviour towards humans are neutral. I got to say it can surely scare you by opening the mouth as widely as possible.
More story about green vine in next post.
© srivathsa.s

These wildlife photos that i publish in this blog are copyrighted.
contact me for full resolution pictures. srivathsaaa@gmail.com

sun bird family

One day we were roaming around a village to take photos of a peacock (needless to say a villager misguided us). After sometime we were disappointed n planning to leave the place. We found a nest which was hanging to a lantena in a shrubby area. Our faces were lit and we wanted to check out the nest.

 

Sunbird chick

I touched the nest gently n we heard some faint sounds and we saw the hatchling(chick) opening its beak . At this moment i took some snaps, n my camera was too close to the nest,So with limited light the image came out less sharper










Male sunbird

 The male is a beauty. Male helps in feeding the young .The male was very careful when it was around the nest, it used to take 2 min to approach the nest.

It was metal glossy and dark purple,it was spectacular.Sadly there was much shade around the nest. So we couldn't do much.

  






Female sunbird
 Female builds and incubates. Female alone builds the nest.Breeding season mainly from March to May.
mainly it feeds spiders and small insects to its chick. You can see the spider in the beak if u observe properly.











Male feeding
The frequency of feeding in the day time is too high. We noticed the . birds returning to the nest within 5 to 6 min. You can see the shiny body of the male,its just gorgeous.










Female feeding
 I could see only 2 hatchlings, i guess  there was another. I decided to take the  shot close since i had 72mm digital  camera. The optical zoom was not  enough to frame the birds.













The way i took these shots

We planned to make some hide using surrounding natural stuff, we collected some arecanut leaves . I sat down on the ground with dried foliage all over me. Bird did not recognize any of the changes.

© srivathsa.s

These wildlife photos that i publish in this blog are copyrighted.
contact me for full resolution pictures. srivathsaaa@gmail.com