Bhargava Srivari
24-05-2011, 10:22 AM
A long-tailed shrike, shot outside the resort premises- late in the vening @ around 6:20 pm.
We were staying at the tea valley resort and the only word to describe it- "birdwatcher's paradise". Mine being a trip with parents, family friends (including kids), was not a photography trip, but the canon sure was there to give me company. It was treat to watch long-tailed shrikes, small minivets, scarlet minivet (male and female), oriental white-eye, sunbirds, red-whiskered bulbul (which is a commoner in the area), an oriental magpie roin collecting nesting material, malabar whistlong thrush and more. I even saw a pair of the malabar whistling thrush mating while climbing a steep slope and that ensured that I didn't even get a record shot of the scene! However, the group of 10 people with me ensured that I managed to make ONLY record shots of every bird I saw :( Still, it was an eventful trip during which I realised that the place has some serious potential for birding and worth another trip specially for the purpose.
We even sighted nilgiri langurs, a crested-serpent eagle, barking deer, chestnut headed bee-eaters, gaur and striped-nec mongoose on our way to Eravikkulam nationl park. The flipside of the story though was our failure to even enter the national park as there was a queue as long as at least a couple of kilometers and a drizzle.
f5.6, 1/125sec, ISO 2000, EV +0.3, 400mm, processed in 'neat image' due to lot of noise in BG
canon 60D, canon 100-400 L IS, handheld
P.S-: Be willing to shoot consistently at ISO 800 or more anytime before 8am and after 3:30 pm to be able to get "usable" shots of birds!
We were staying at the tea valley resort and the only word to describe it- "birdwatcher's paradise". Mine being a trip with parents, family friends (including kids), was not a photography trip, but the canon sure was there to give me company. It was treat to watch long-tailed shrikes, small minivets, scarlet minivet (male and female), oriental white-eye, sunbirds, red-whiskered bulbul (which is a commoner in the area), an oriental magpie roin collecting nesting material, malabar whistlong thrush and more. I even saw a pair of the malabar whistling thrush mating while climbing a steep slope and that ensured that I didn't even get a record shot of the scene! However, the group of 10 people with me ensured that I managed to make ONLY record shots of every bird I saw :( Still, it was an eventful trip during which I realised that the place has some serious potential for birding and worth another trip specially for the purpose.
We even sighted nilgiri langurs, a crested-serpent eagle, barking deer, chestnut headed bee-eaters, gaur and striped-nec mongoose on our way to Eravikkulam nationl park. The flipside of the story though was our failure to even enter the national park as there was a queue as long as at least a couple of kilometers and a drizzle.
f5.6, 1/125sec, ISO 2000, EV +0.3, 400mm, processed in 'neat image' due to lot of noise in BG
canon 60D, canon 100-400 L IS, handheld
P.S-: Be willing to shoot consistently at ISO 800 or more anytime before 8am and after 3:30 pm to be able to get "usable" shots of birds!