Pond Heron

[Mrudul Godbole]

Photographed in bharatpur.

Canon 50D, 100-400mm L IS USM, f6.3, 1/800, ISO 400, hand held, full frame.

Comments and critiques welcome..

[Murugan Anantharaman]

Nice image of pond heron. Its nice to see the bird where its supposed to be. Sadly herons are becoming increasingly visible in swamps and ponds in towns and cities amongst plastic bags and other rubble :(.

[Sabyasachi Patra]

Nice image. I like the eye contact. The texture on the tree trunk is nice. We can learn patience from them.

I agree that these poor things have to search their food from the polluted waters. No idea if anyone has done a study to understand the impact of pesticides and toxics on them. Thanks for sharing.

Cheers,
Sabyasachi

[Bhargava Srivari]

You did well to get close to the bird :) The composition is fine, and the clean BG adds. I'm waiting to see some images of ducks, as I heard there are a large number of ducks in Bharatpur this year :)

tfs

[Sabyasachi Patra]

Not many birds in bharatpur. Whoever said that there are lot of birds in bharatpur hasn't seen it in the past. I will always compare bharatpur with the impressions that I have in the past. This year the water was released late and hence less birds. I didn't even see the Sarus. The trees have been cut off by the villagers and cattle freely grazing. Tough situation.

[Bhargava Srivari]

Certailny not a situation to feel encouraged about. Hopefully, the situation will improve by next year. However, it was from the renowned canon contractor photographer Sudhir Shivaram, that I heard about Bharatpur having a fairly large number of ducks this year (not all birds that used to visit bharatpur year after year, but just the ducks).

Cheers

[Sabyasachi Patra]

Bhargava,
Canon Contractor?

I had simply shared what I experienced. I have no inclination to prove anyone wrong. It is upto people to choose their masters.

Also, certain informations like flock arrivals can be true or not depending upon date. So I would like to know when did you hear that large number of "ducks" have arrived? And large means how many?

I am wary of hearing these subjective things like "many birds have come", "this year there is water" etc etc. If you call up a hotel owner, rickshaw driver or a tour operator they will normally paint a rosy picture. Even this year I was told that there are birds. Perspective varies.

People who haven't visited Bharatpur before, may feel that there are many birds when they see some "ducks" at a distance. Having said that, I saw a flock of pintails numbering 400-500 or so. You can see many more in Sultanpur.