Sloth bear | Tadoba

[Bhargava Srivari]

Sharing this for record :)

canon EOS 60D, canon 100-400 L IS USM, tadoba- Jan'12
f/5.6, 1/20sec, ISO 1600, EV 0, 216mm, full-frame, handheld.

Sabyasachi,

I must say that your remark about your memory fading was a good joke :D Believe me, from what I have seen, you have a great memory. I haven't posted posted any bear images from Tadoba yet, and with good (read, bad) reason. Out of the 11 encounters, 7 were during the night when driving from Mohurli to Chandrapur on the main road, and I didn't make any images. The other 4 times I saw them were during safari, and on all occassions, the images came out soft/blurred (courtesy, my skill or the lack of it :D). I'm posting one image for record.

Cheers

[Sabyasachi Patra]

Good to see a sloth bear. Doesn't matter if the image is not the best. One can always post images as a record shot just for the sake of documentation.

Everytime I see people selling crusted apple, guava etc on the roads, I visualise a few sloth bears dying. Most of the time we stop on the road to buy these fruits, as they are cheaper than what we get in the super market. However, that means less fruits for these sloth bears.

Mostly events are imprinted in my memory. I had said my memory is failing, because I actually fumbled to recollect something during a TV interview. :(

Sabyasachi

[Murugan Anantharaman]

Nice image of the sloth bear. I have never seen a sloth bear open in the wild though have had a momentary glimpse of it. The closest was when we were trekking at Vasota and we could almost hear the bear call out from behind our ears. I've heard in Daroji bears are a common sight but there also the numbers are dwindling now.

[Saktipada Panigrahi]

Nice rare sighting.I fully agree with Shri Sabyasachi that the rich diversity and wealth of our forests could be displayed if rare sightings are posted.One should not shy away because of image quality.
If we are in a bird sanctuary,however small it may be,Snake and Mongoose will be there.They contribute equally to make a viable food chain.
Thanks for sharing.SaktiWild

[Mrudul Godbole]

Nice sighting. Its quite rare to see them in the day time. I too have sighted them 1-2 times at night in BR hills. Thanks for sharing.