Bandhavgarh Diary Mar-15

[Vipin Sharma]

During recent trip to BTR , came across lot of new male & female tigers. Most of them are sub adult cubs of either Rajbera female or of Banbei female. This guy is a male sub adult cub of Rajbera female. Currently all of them looking for their own space. Next two three months in BTR is going to be eventful since in same territory two males and three females are looking to make their territory.

Canon EOS7D , Canon 300mm f/4 , 1/640 , ISO-800 , f/4 , +0.3 step , Hand held.

[Saktipada Panigrahi]

Nice composition with habitat. Thanks for sharing. SaktiWild

[Roopak Gangadharan]

Nice... more in line with its nature.

one can't help but wonder at the irony of the situation where a female tigress brings up litter after litter and then the sibilings have no where to go and have to settle it out in the space available, leading to more and more males getting killed even before they reach their prime. Dispersion of the vanquished is an important part of natures way to ensure genetic diversity and avoid inbreeding. With almost all the corridors connecting our sanctuaries disappearing wont be long before our tigers go the lions way...

TFS
Roopak

[Mrudul Godbole]

Nice to see it cautiously looking from the thick vegetation. I think the AF point is locked on the branch in the foreground. Using manual focus would have helped here. Agree with Roopak, it will be tough for this new generation to find a territory for themselves :(. Thanks for sharing.

[Sabyasachi Patra]

May be if there was a possibility to move slightly to the left, then the tiger's left eye (to our right) would have been clear. The saturation is on the higher side.

The inbreeding in Bandhavgarh is going on for a long time. Just that nobody seems to care. As long as a tiger is sighted, nothing else matters to the authorities. Unless they recreate connectivity with other larger Tiger Reserves like Kanha, this reserve will suffer. When the government is promoting roads cutting through our premier reserves without adequate mitigation measures, leave apart promoting alternate roads, recreating corridors for wildlife is perhaps a pipe dream. (read the march '15 issue of IndiaWilds Newsletter).

A couple of days back a cub was strangulated outside the park in the land of a politician. That land is about 50 acres with water hole, so tigers often goes there. The snare was probably laid for wildboar or some other herbivore.

[Rajbir Oberoi]

nice one sir but i think focus in on the branch in the foreground than face.... Manual focus or Centre AF point wud hav helped....

[Vipin Sharma]

Dear All , thnx indeed for your kind comments.
Yes I did tried with few images with manual focus but couldn't manage better than the one posted here.
Lot of clusters in between , and not only clusters , lot of jeeps in between hence had a difficult time to compose the image too. This is a full frame shot.