Tiger/Kabini

[Praveen Siddannavar]

Call it a human tendency or natural instinct especially with wildlife enthusiast & photographers, it is very hard to get satisfied with images we click and animals we spot. Such was a case with me and my group, despite having two good sightings of leopards. We wanted more and why not it was our last game drive, so this lead to series of discussions about sightings a
t various locations, routes to try, track movements of these elusive cats and so on. However I am the last one to demand when it comes to a particular naturalist, to me all have enough knowledge, skills and are keen in spotting the cats. With so much superstitious minds playing, especially me, our naturalist too got changed at the last minute, but I had no complains whatsoever as to me anyone was more than welcome. But we had someone real special, the most senior naturalist with ~ 24 years of experience at JLR Kabini; he was none other than our own Umesh & on the other hand we happily continued with the same driver Muddu.
We all had agreed we will reach the check post as early as possible, but it didn’t happen for obvious reasons so I was really not keen to go by our original plan. As we reached the check post, I advised Muddu to take the Udboor boating point route that was completely in opposite direction to what we had planned the previous night. Believe me we had spent hours to make a plan but it got changed in a matter of seconds. The good part was our group was very cooperative so no questions or arguments on this decision.
We drove through the udboor boating point route, and realized that the mist was very dense but we didn’t have any choice, so we continued to drive through Kumbalgalli and later passed through the old MM road. No sighting of any animals except for deers, a brown fish owl was seen at a distance. We reached the sunset point and spent about 5-10 minutes, Umesh our senior naturalist was sharing his experience that he recently had spotted a tiger walking along side of the backwaters in presence of some 100 spotted deers and none of them chose to give an alarm call. Upon hearing this our drive Muddu pulled out his binoculars and had a good look on the banks of backwaters of Kabini River, but no sight of any cats, of course there were herd of spotted deers and a small herd of Indian Gaurs that we could see.
The time was 7am, we decided to drive from this point and as we reached the junction of the Eucalyptus plantation, our drive muddu had no intention to drive towards the plantation but at the last minute Umesh our naturalist asked him to drive right, on to the eucalyptus plantation. As we drove about 15 meters inside the plantation, Umesh whispered Tiger tiger tiger… pointing towards our left. Hats off to him to hold his excitement, to me Umesh seemed as cool as cucumber, despite having spotted a Tiger and we all know how difficult it is to find one especially at Kabini.
We instantly fired the shots in burst mode; you must be wondering why/how we reacted so quickly.
A huge male tiger was not far away, as per my camera details he was exactly 17 meters from our jeep. I have photographed many tigers in various national parks or tiger reserves and have also visited kabini so many times but had never ever got a clear or rather decent image of a tiger at Kabini. Indeed this was a special moment and an extra ordinary sighting. I am sharing an image that was my first shot of this handsome young male, to know what happens next, stay tuned.

“The air we breathe and the water we drink stem from the biodiversity of the universal environment and its economics. The tiger is at the center of this truth. If it goes, we go.” - Billy Arjan Singh

Camera - Canon 1D Mark IV, Canon f4 500mm lens
EXIF - ISO 1600 Av 4 Tv 1/640 sec EC - 0.3, Subject distance 17 M, Small crop, time shot 7:10am