Pair of Indian scimitar babblers - Singing with abandon - in Mahabaleshwar

[Subhash Shrivastava]

Canon SX60 HS, 1/200, f/5.6, 162 mm, ISO-800. Basic PP in GIMP.
Clicked in Mahabaleshwar on 8th Oct, 2016.

This was our first trip to Western Ghats, we planned it in Aug,2016 and chose M’shwar after learning that the rooms in OMH, Dandeli are under innovation. Came September and with that the heavy rains & floods from edge of Sahayadri to almost whole of central Deccan. The weather forecast kept on telling about the possibility of heavy rains in M’shwar during our stay. We also got the news that most of the flowering is Kaas have come to an abrupt end at the onset of unseasonal deluge, but we held on.

It was the first day of stay; I went out in early morning fog and started seeing the birds that I have not seen earlier. Photography was almost impossible under the circumstances, but the birds brought back the smile on my face. All of sudden, the place started reverberating with the bird calls that I heard for the first time. I followed the fluttering shadows among the leaves of a big tree and was plain lucky to get this image of a pair of Scimitars.

[Saktipada Panigrahi]

Nice image of the pair looking in the same direction. Long eyebrows and lovely curved yellow bill, aptly taken. Thanks for sharing. SaktiWild

[Abhishek Jamalabad]

Lovely. This species is not particularly easy to photograph.
Mahabaleshwar is quite a unique Western Ghats destination... very different from the other hotspots further south. I've had some of best wildlife sightings there. :)

[Mrudul Godbole]

Nice to see a pair. Good photograph under difficult light conditions. Slight less space at the bottom would be nice.

Mahabaleshwar has become a very busy tourist spot these days. Good to know there are still lot of birds coming there. Thanks for sharing.

[Sandipan Ghosh]

Very tough job to find them.....great photography....

[Subhash Shrivastava]

Hi Saksi da. Abhishek, Mrudul and Sandipan. Thanks for viewing and sharing your feedback.

Mrudul, I agree. Mahabaleshwar has become very crowded, and there are garbage everywhere, even on the bed of river Venna while going to the Waterfall there are polythene bags, bottles, plastic etc. Most of the crowd are so called 'Pious Pilgrims', difficult to understand how they can worship the river then dump their garbage in it :(.
The MTDC is still tucked among the lush greenery adjacent to the forest. Most of my bird sightings were in the MTDC or just outside it in early mornings.

[Sabyasachi Patra]

Nice to see this species. When you are shooting with sky in the background, you need to dial in a positive exposure compensation.

Sad to hear about Mahabaleshwar. Last time when we were there, it was raining cats and dogs and I just recorded the sound of rains. :)

Cheers,
Sabyasachi