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Kaustuv Chatterjee
20-07-2013, 01:00 PM
Fierce fish eater! These large birds of prey have one of the most unearthly calls among birds. Shot at Katerniaghat. It had caught a large river carp and seeing us left it by the side of the road and flew off to this branch. Its mate was out of sight but calling stridently in its banshee like style. Listen to its call on:
http://www.xeno-canto.org/species/Haliaeetus-ichthyaetus
Nikon D90, Nikkor 70-300mm, 300mm, ISO 400, 1/400s - F/5.6
Roopak Gangadharan
20-07-2013, 01:11 PM
super sighting. wish the light was from behind you.

TFS
Roopak
Debasis Bose
20-07-2013, 10:28 PM
Lovely sighting and your description reminds me of Jim Corbetts encounter with Banshee the chudail's call "the scream of a human being in mortal agony". Thanks for sharing
Saktipada Panigrahi
20-07-2013, 10:31 PM
Rare sighting. Nice eye contact. Power is evident in its perch and look. Wish you could get its powerful thigh...Its all luck. The story of Corbett's 'Banshee' evokes a lot of questions in the mind of a child. Thanks for sharing.SaktiWild
Shyamala Kumar
21-07-2013, 09:17 AM
The image effectively conveys the power of the raptor.Great capture!!.TFS
Mrudul Godbole
21-07-2013, 01:15 PM
Great sighting of this bird of prey. Good head turn and eye contact. Agree with Roopak about the light. Slight +ve EC would have been good. Thanks for sharing.
Kaustuv Chatterjee
21-07-2013, 07:34 PM
Thanks all. Yes Debasis, do remember the 'Banshee' in Corbett's story....and remember the smile I had when I came to the part when he discovered it was a tree!
Sabyasachi Patra
24-07-2013, 11:52 PM
Nice to see this. I agree that frontal lighting would have been good here. I saw a pair in Kaziranga and filmed them, however, they were on the tree top and the angle was steep.

Jungle lore was the first book of Corbett that I read during my childhood days. Even today I can vividly remember the scenes that I had imagined after reading about banshee... and then about his bare foot falling on a sleeping python ... his first leopard shot... Jim Corbett's description is so nice that his books should have been prescribed instead of some of the plays that we read in college.