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.