I recently posted a photograph of Stripe Necked Mongoose feeding on crocodile eggs. http://www.indiawilds.com/forums/sho...1130#post31130 It was a fantastic moment captured, I don't think this behavior has been recorded before. Why did I wait the twenty - thirty minutes to find out what they were up to ? As far as I was concerned they were going about their usual business looking for grubs etc. My boat driver Shivraj however differed he said they were after the crocodile eggs ( we had seen a croc basking at that exact spot the previous day ) . I waited . If I had not I would never have got those shots or observed this first hand. This goes to prove that knowledge does not necessarily come from a PhD.

Some of the greats of wildlife have had no formal learning . A.O.Hume was a civil servant , M.Krishnan a writer and jack of all trades who could not land a decent job because he did not have good marks, Dr. D.K.Lahiri-Choudhuy has a PhD in English !.... and the list can go on and on !

However scientific thinking and the scientific method can compliment this " natural " knowledge , in the old days this knowledge was called " expereince " and was given it due.

Here is another example - I was told by the workers in the Tea Estate I was working in ( situated in the Dooars ) that when the fresh shoots would emerge from the pruned tea bushes , Leopards would come and sit under them especially in the evening . I laughed it off mentally. But one evening as I was returning to my bungalow on my bike I saw a huge male resting under the bushes exactly as they said ! I passed five feet away from him on my bike , I was too shocked to react ! By the time I could comprehend anything I had passed him ! I got home bundled my wife and daughter into my jeep and drove them there . He was still resting peacefully. I have no " reasonable " explanation for this behavior . But the workers had noticed it and made a note of it. Now science can probably take it from here and find a logical explanation. This is one example as to how science can complement local knowledge / expereince.

Anyway coming back to my original post , the idea was to point out that knowledge of natural history is essential to a good wildlife photographer. A good wildlife photograph depicts a subject in relation to the world it lives in. We very often zoom in as much as our lens allows us to. I am equally guilty of this. Its is time we learnt to zoom out.

I am attaching a link that you might find interesting

Birds in Habitat