[sach.sri]

Originally Posted by gd1418

Wah, wah. Bahut badhiyan Sachin babu. Baghin Nala at her best. I still remember this angry flash in her eyes when she gets disturbed. The cub looks naughty and very very cute.

Thank you sir. Yes, it was a very nice time with these cute little guys - the next set of pics will give more of the naughty and cuddly little kids

Originally Posted by Alfa Romeo

hey the pictured are really good and can make out that you would have had one of the good surprises of lifetime.. very nice photography.

Thanks Alfa. Great surprise is what i would say, we were not expecting this. There were no calls in the jungle and everything was totally silent - probably due to the tall blonde grass hiding the tigers effectively and if not for our sharp guide - we would have also dirven away missing them.

Originally Posted by samarjitdhar

El fantastico. Once you look into a tiger's eyes apart from your own fear, one cannot miss that these tigers are themselves afraid of us humans. It is there in their looks. Its so sad that such beautiful creatures are killed mercilessly for commercial gains. Keep the pictures flowing.

Thanks Samarjit. Yes, they are fidgety around us humans and always wary and keep an eye on us - but i think the younger generation - the kids are more frankly curious than afraid, though it can be attributed to the carefree nature of youth.

In my opinion - there should be more stringent punishment against poachers and hunters, but well, we cant even seem to punish the guys like Sansar chand what to say of others that are not even caught!

[Coooolcat21]

Great Pictures ! Changeable Hawk eagle is just great. Well with tigers ,they seem to have taken special interest in showing themselves up in front of u. Lucky!
Rating 5*
Regards

[abheekg]

Sachin boss
You seem to have had a mighty good outing at Pench. Why didn't you tell me about your plan, I would have loved to meet you again. Great pics of the biodiversity of the park. Pray carry on. A well deserved 5 star rating from my side.

Dr. A Ghosh

[sach.sri]

Originally Posted by Coooolcat21

Great Pictures ! Changeable Hawk eagle is just great. Well with tigers ,they seem to have taken special interest in showing themselves up in front of u. Lucky!
Rating 5*
Regards

Thanks Coooocat21. To tell you the truth - this was my first tiger sighting this year and after a long gap of more than six months . But yes, this was indeed a good sighting and lucky.

Thanks for the appreciation and rating - this is my first 5 star rating

Originally Posted by abheekg

Sachin boss
You seem to have had a mighty good outing at Pench. Why didn't you tell me about your plan, I would have loved to meet you again. Great pics of the biodiversity of the park. Pray carry on. A well deserved 5 star rating from my side.

Dr. A Ghosh

Thanks doc. Actually at the time when we made this trip - i had too much on my mind, with having to cancel my self drive trip and go back from Khajuraho due to illness and then re-planning and coming back. And in all this i missed out calling you.

Thanks again for appreciation and rating.

[sach.sri]

continuing with the TL.

So here we were in total peace with the Tiger family happily looking at them and clicking away with no one to disturb us.
It was great looking at the antics of the youngsters and they provided some good photo opportunities also their frank appraisals of us Vs the guarded appraisal of the mother also delighted us.

It was almost as if the kids accepted us looking at them (i know human mind makes us believe what we want to) and i felt an overwhelming joy and at that moment - everything was right and world was a good place to be

Let me showcase the kids and the tigress through my lens

Frank Appraisal


Sitting down - not bothered by us






Side profile - giving us the look


More adult tiger like stare

[abheekg]

This is great work buddy. You are the first one to have photographed the stripes of these babies so clearly. Can i ask you to make a collage of pics of the right and left flanks of these cubs and post them here for us to study, understand the stripe patterns and copy them to our database of stripes from pench. Can i also request your permission to repost some of your pics in my thread in indiamike documenting the pench cubs ?

This cub seems to be a female. How many cubs did u see with the baghinnala female on this day ?

Dr. A Ghosh

Originally Posted by sach.sri

continuing with the TL.

So here we were in total peace with the Tiger family happily looking at them and clicking away with no one to disturb us.
It was great looking at the antics of the youngsters and they provided some good photo opportunities also their frank appraisals of us Vs the guarded appraisal of the mother also delighted us.

It was almost as if the kids accepted us looking at them (i know human mind makes us believe what we want to) and i felt an overwhelming joy and at that moment - everything was right and world was a good place to be

Let me showcase the kids and the tigress through my lens

Frank Appraisal
Attachment 940584

Sitting down - not bothered by us
Attachment 940585

Attachment 940586

Attachment 940587

Side profile - giving us the look
Attachment 940588

More adult tiger like stare
Attachment 940589

Attachment 940590

Attachment 940591

Attachment 940592

Attachment 940593

[sach.sri]

Thanks doc. Will try to work on the collage and post.

Two cubs playing...





Cutie pie






Getting up


Giving us the look




Third cub with mother




P.S:- The hand of the master. Learnt a important lesson today, cropping of the image to give it some perspective and not only.

Pic as cropped by me.


Same pic - by GD sir.


Thanks GD sir.

[Fauji]

Hey Sachin,

Wonderful. Great pictures as usual with a nice nice write up.

You are so lucky to spot the Sher Khan. Your wonderful TL brought back memories of our trip to Pench in December last year. We went with Bablu and Abheek's boys. But unfortunately we could not spot the King. Bablu was crestfallen and he tried his best. Abheek has a wonderful team there and these guys are superb.

If i show these pictures to my wife she will kill me!! But i will. They are lovely.

To top it all, the park itself is fantastic. We did not see tiger, but enjoyed every momenet inside the park.

Rated five stars. Richly deserving. Looking forward to more pictures.

[Alfa Romeo]

Originally Posted by sach.sri

Thanks Alfa. Great surprise is what i would say, we were not expecting this. There were no calls in the jungle and everything was totally silent - probably due to the tall blonde grass hiding the tigers effectively and if not for our sharp guide - we would have also dirven away missing them.

true. you had everything your way on the day and you were as well lucky

[sach.sri]

Originally Posted by Fauji

Hey Sachin,

Wonderful. Great pictures as usual with a nice nice write up.

You are so lucky to spot the Sher Khan. Your wonderful TL brought back memories of our trip to Pench in December last year. We went with Bablu and Abheek's boys. But unfortunately we could not spot the King. Bablu was crestfallen and he tried his best. Abheek has a wonderful team there and these guys are superb.

If i show these pictures to my wife she will kill me!! But i will. They are lovely.

To top it all, the park itself is fantastic. We did not see tiger, but enjoyed every momenet inside the park.

Rated five stars. Richly deserving. Looking forward to more pictures.

Thanks . I agree, the park is beautiful - even at the height of summers, with abundant water supply, the park is still green and had a lot of bird species.

-------
continuing with the TL

More of cubs playing






Suddenly Rohan says - "sir jitni photo kheechni hain, kheench lo - yeh chalne waale hain". I was perplexed as to how does he know this - but he explained - "tigress apne pugs chaat rahi hai, chalne ki tyaari hai".

Tigress licking her pugs


True to his words, the tigress after licking her pugs sat for a couple of minutes and then they all got up and vanished into the bush.



I could not capture the tigress standing and she was behind bushes. We bade goodbye to the family.

Goodbye time


Landscape


We had spent so much time here - that we did not have enough time to complete the whole route and Rohan enquired if it is ok with us - if we exit the jungle a little early. We were all very happy with this sighting and had no issues, so we took a short cut out.

On the way out, we saw these birds.

Beautiful bird with shining blue coat of the back and orange/white belly. what is its name?


Racquet tailed drongo


Thus ended our third Safari in Pench, we returned to the resort happy and satisfied.

Now we had 4 more Safaris to go in PEnch, what was in store for us?

to be contd...

[sach.sri]

Tuesday Morning arrived and we all got up and got ready for the morning Safari. Today the resort's resident Naturalist will be taking us on the Safari and we were excited with the prospect of gaining knowledge from him.

It is amazing as to how when we are in jungle - we get up at 4.00 every morning to get ready for the morning Safaris, but when at home getting up at 8 is also a struggle

Anyways - all of us loaded in the gypsy and went towards the gate. The naturalist did the formalities and we entered the jungle. It was quiet and we were wondering as to what will it be in this Safari.

As we entered the park, we saw this male Neelgai


Going in, we reached the Junewani pond


Pied Kingfisher perched on a branch waiting for some fish


Little green bee-eaters. These are different than what we find up North




Little Green bee eater


Antlers


We were on the trail, and suddenly our naturalist pointed out - Grey headed horn bill. WE all were delighted with the sighting as this is something that i have wanted to see, and my son was also interested as he had just read lion king and hornbill was a character "zazu" in that book

Grey Headed Hornbill

[sach.sri]

Flameback woodpecker.


We came to know later that while we were clicking the grey headed hornbill and flameback woodpecker - we missed out on a sloth bear sighting.

Some Eagle - dont remember which. Can someone help identify?


Red Jungle Fowl - very busy little forager, getting a shot with its head straight was a tough task


Grey headed fish eagle


Grey headed fish eagle


What bird is this?


Eurasian thicknee - hide and seek



Eurasian thicknee in its nest


Jungle owlet


Jungle owlet


A little further we saw these owls - it was a full family but i dont remember its name. Someone pls help in ID





With this, we came to an end of this safari. This Safari was all about birds - I came to know later that our naturalist was a birder and from Bharatpur, so naturally his inclination towards birds showed .

to be contd..

[sach.sri]

Back in the resort - all the cottages have a balcony with a hanging chair and my son had been after us to sit in it. After lunch - we went to the balcony and he played with it to his heart's content.

Balcony - where it all began


This is when we discovered something beautiful - our balcony was overlooking some trees and on one side - we had a water pipe running, it was chipped and water was sparying out from there as a shower. There was a small plant near by on which this shower was falling - and a lot of small birds were coming there to drink water and take a shower.

We saw - golden oriole, black headed oriole, some sort of shikra, a couple of small green birds that i dont know the name, tickle blue fly catcher, treepies, brahminy myna and some other birds also there. I clicked some - but had to leave because we had to go to the jungle. Next day was Wednesday and jungle was closed in the afternoon - so it was decided that tomorrow afternoon, we will sit in the balcony and click to our heart's content.

Take a look at the birds i saw there -

Spotted dove


Black headed oriole


Which bird is this? Pls help ID


Black headed oriole - drinking water
This one was a little shabby i dont if a different species or not


Black headed oriole


Black headed oriole


Some Shikra


Which bird is this? Pls help ID


Brahminy Myna


Which bird is this? Pls help ID


Which bird is this? Pls help ID


Black headed oriole - the clean one


Tickle blue fly catcher


Which bird is this? Pls help ID

[llamrei]

Awesome report, Sachin. Lovely images of tigers and some splendid bird photos too! The Eagle you could not ID is most probably, a White-eyed Buzzard. The small bird on the ground after that is a Ashy-crowed Sparrow Lark. The lovely green bird with a black throat is the Golden-fronted Leafbird.

[sach.sri]

Originally Posted by llamrei

Awesome report, Sachin. Lovely images of tigers and some splendid bird photos too! The Eagle you could not ID is most probably, a White-eyed Buzzard. The small bird on the ground after that is a Ashy-crowed Sparrow Lark. The lovely green bird with a black throat is the Golden-fronted Leafbird.

Thank you sir. More to come

What about the other green bird - that does not have the golden patch on its head? Also the last two owl pics - which owl is it? Pretty huge bird.