Pelican in flight

[Mrudul Godbole]

Photographed in Ranganathittu.

Canon 50D, 100-400mm L IS USM, ISO 400, 1/3200, f6.3, hand held

Comments and critiques welcome..

[Saktipada Panigrahi]

Nice wingspread.Good example of winglength/area in flight vis-a-vis its weight.Some details are lost. Thanks for sharing.SaktiWild

[Sabyasachi Patra]

Nice sharp image. Good gliding pose. The sky colours have come out well. I am told that most of the times shooters used to fire pellets from the bottom when they used to glide, as the pellets find the exposed soft belly. Fortunately, these poaching incidents have come down in many places.

In Chilika lake, they used to do another method of poaching in earlier days. One man gets into water and covers his head with a empty mud vessel. Since the water in chilika lake is mostly shallow, the person can easily walk/move in a bent position under water with head over it. The birds see a earthen vessel slowly moving towards them, and they don't feel alarmed. The man moves close and catches hold of one duck by its leg and pulls it down under water. After a brief struggle, the bird's life is finished. And the poacher carries on this process with another bird.

I am told that a variant of this technique is also used in Pakistan to do poaching. There a man places the mask of a bird made of an actual birds feathers and places it above its head. So he is able to breathe and moves among birds to catch and pull down the birds into the water.

With such brainpower at our disposal, a lot of these birds ardly stand a chance.
Sabyasachi

[Mrudul Godbole]

Oh was never aware of this technique. Is is surely a very simple trick. I hope is is not followed these days.

[Roopak Gangadharan]

Nice image mrudul i remember a similar image you had posted sometime back, is it from the same series ?

intresting write up sir, Iam hearing of these two for the first time. actually if one spends some time on the countryside you get to hear so many of these tricks, many where the old techniques are improvised but with disastours consequences especailly in fishing.

[Atul Sinai]

Nice gliding pose. Loved the wings spread.

Sabyasachi, was not aware about such techniques, thanks for throwing light on it.

[Mrudul Godbole]

Thanks all for the comments.

Roopak, yes this is from the same series photographed at Ranganathittu.