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Old 14th May 2010, 13:04   #76
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Our First Day - First Show at Bandhavgarh ended with the sighting of 3 female tigers and 2 cubs. The cubs were sighted very early in the morning (5:45AM) with poor light conditions. They were playing next to a nullah while their mother was keeping a watch at a distance. Since the tigers were in no mood to disappear, we had to disappear from the place in search of our next sighting.
The credit for the sighting of the second female goes fully to our guide (the forest department assigned guide). We got the news at the centerpoint that some jeeps on route A spotted a tiger at a distance. The sighting was not good with only ears being visible in the bush. We were assigned route A for the return and so I was a bit excited. Within 10 mins we were at the spot with a few other jeeps waiting there. But where is the tiger ? On asking, we found out that no one could see the tiger but some guides were sure that there was one. We started a long wait. After about 15 mins, patience ran out for most jeeps with many started leaving the place. Our guide insisted that we wait there a little more since the deer movements indicated that the tiger could get up. Our patience paid a rich dividend when suddenly alarm calls started. The tiger got up and started walking - it was a female and was still at a distance. Our guide told us that there were two tigers, one male and one female. The male couldn't be seen but his growling was heard while the female was the one that got up and was walking. The guide told that the female would either go up-hill to meet the male or would come down-hill to drink water at the nullah. He asked our driver to position our jeep in anticipation of a downhill movement of the tigress. It paid off - the tigress came to the nullah, drank water and again sat down. We watched her for about 40 mins and when she refused to disappear, we said goodbye to her.
The last sighting was very close to the gate where we saw a female resting at a distance. Heard that the tigress had injured one of her legs and couldn't hunt properly. No wonder, she never got up from her position and we had to leave as we ran out of time.

Good sightings but none of them at a touching distance. Little we knew that our luck was going to change the very next morning ...
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Old 14th May 2010, 13:29   #77
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@Sabynag, we all are with you patiently listening to the story, watching the beautiful snaps and ofcourse enjoying the suspense .

Waiting for the next day.
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Old 14th May 2010, 20:57   #78
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Test your naturalist skill

How quickly can you detect wildlife in the below picture ?
Attached Thumbnails
A Week-long Wildlife Adventure - Kanha & Bandhavgarh-img_0265_compressed.jpg  

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Old 14th May 2010, 21:30   #79
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Quote:
Originally Posted by sabynag View Post
How quickly can you detect wildlife in the below picture ?

There is a brown bird in the right extreme corner of the pic.. not sure what it is called..spotted quite a few of these in Tadoba.. they are so used to the vehicles moving around that they dont even budge no matter how close the vehicle is..

Last edited by s@tan2s@int : 14th May 2010 at 21:34.
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Old 14th May 2010, 22:13   #80
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Some kind of birds ...

I think it's these two birds...
which birds are they?
A Week-long Wildlife Adventure - Kanha & Bandhavgarh-img_0265_compressed.jpg
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Old 15th May 2010, 12:17   #81
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Quote:
Originally Posted by sen2009 View Post
I think it's these two birds...
which birds are they?
You got it right. The reason I asked for the "time taken" instead of "what is there" is that, in a safari set-up, a naturalist doesn't get more than a few seconds to detect these from a moving vehicle. A naturalist needs to constantly comb the 360-degree surrounding (and from the ground through the top of the trees) with his eyes to show you as much wildlife as he can.

Since this quiz is over with the answers given, lets open another one. Which birds are these ? A close-up is provided below ...
Attached Thumbnails
A Week-long Wildlife Adventure - Kanha & Bandhavgarh-img_0263_compressed.jpg  

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Old 15th May 2010, 13:21   #82
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Second Day at Bandhavgarh - Part I

On second day, we got the jeep exclusively for us as no other guests opted for the morning safari that day. We hit the gate again at 4:40am, had our bed-tea there while waiting for the gate to open, and passed the time by chatting with other tourists in the queue. Our driver knew that this would be our last safari in Bandhavgarh and he was yet to keep his promise of showing us a tiger at a touching distance. After finishing the paperworks at the park office, the driver came to us with a lot of excitement in his face - "Sir we got B/C, we have a chance today at B". My heart started pumping up. We were at the forefront of the queue and he rushed the jeep in as soon as the gate opened. Route B is a hilly terrain and is very different from any other routes in Bandhavgarh. But where is the king ? We drove for almost an hour but with no sign of any tiger. I was almost giving up hope when the driver suddenly said - "Panje, abhi abhi gayi hai". He pointed us to a series of fresh pugmarks of a tigress. We started following the footprints, but then that disappeared into the bushes. We waited for a few minutes there but no calls or signs of a tiger. So we started moving. We didn't even go 500m when on a bent the driver suddenly put the break hard and we saw that the road in front of us was blocked - a huge tigress was resting on the safari track. For the next one hour, we had an excellent time with her. First, she didn't even care that we arrived and were watching her. We were the only jeep to be present there throughout and so she decided to ignore us completely. After resting for about 15 mins, she got up and started walking (and we slowly started following her). While walking, she was continuously marking her territory by spraying into the trees. She then answered nature's call right in front of us and then went inside a small cave. We waited there for her to come out. She came out after a while and again did some morning walk in front of us. By then, a couple of other jeeps had arrived and the tigress got a bit disturbed. So she started walking away from the road. We kept our eyes on her as she started moving away into the bushes. Slowly she moved out of my 300mm telephoto range. We found no point waiting there any more as we had already seen the best part of it. I heard a lot about route B before coming to Bandhavgarh and this route lived upto its fame.

Over to photos from route B ... Oops ! photos are not getting uploaded. Problems with the server ? Three attempts failed. Will try after some time.
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Old 15th May 2010, 13:34   #83
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They are Stone Plovers / Thick Knee's. They are a nesting pair. I noticed a beautiful phenomenon which i will put up in my trip report.. The female rests on the eggs for a while and the male keeps a watch and after sometime, the male dons the mommy role and guards the egg while the female gets food and comes back... Incredible!

Lovely trip report and nice narration! Bring them on..

Last edited by redrage : 15th May 2010 at 13:36.
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Old 15th May 2010, 14:28   #84
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I continue to face the photo upload problem. Is anyone else facing similar problem in other threads ? Is there any max limit on total upload memory ? At image level, I have been following the 1MB limit, so that's not an issue here. Error message gives no hint.

Last edited by sabynag : 15th May 2010 at 14:35.
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Old 15th May 2010, 14:31   #85
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Quote:
Originally Posted by redrage View Post
They are Stone Plovers / Thick Knee's. They are a nesting pair. I noticed a beautiful phenomenon which i will put up in my trip report.. The female rests on the eggs for a while and the male keeps a watch and after sometime, the male dons the mommy role and guards the egg while the female gets food and comes back... Incredible!

Lovely trip report and nice narration! Bring them on..
Yes, it's Eurasian Thick Knee. These birds are found at many places in India (even in cities like Hyderabad), some parts of Asia, Europe and North Africa.
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Old 15th May 2010, 20:32   #86
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Sabynag,
It is a beautifully narrated thread with awesome photographs.
This Thick Knee, captured by my camera at the Ranganatittu bird sanctuary with a 400mm.
Regards,
A Week-long Wildlife Adventure - Kanha & Bandhavgarh-img_3243.jpg
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Old 15th May 2010, 21:17   #87
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An amazing thread with great photographs and super narration. a 5 star from me.

Dr. A Ghosh
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Old 15th May 2010, 21:48   #88
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Snaps of the tigress in route B ...
Attached Thumbnails
A Week-long Wildlife Adventure - Kanha & Bandhavgarh-img_0227_compressed.jpg  

A Week-long Wildlife Adventure - Kanha & Bandhavgarh-img_0228_compressed.jpg  

A Week-long Wildlife Adventure - Kanha & Bandhavgarh-img_0233_1_compressed.jpg  

A Week-long Wildlife Adventure - Kanha & Bandhavgarh-img_0239_compressed.jpg  

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Old 16th May 2010, 16:20   #89
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Quote:
Originally Posted by sabynag View Post
Snaps of the tigress in route B ...

sabyanag

All the cat photos seem to have been shot from a level high up.. maybe you were standing up in your gypsy seats while shooting them.Such high level shots usually give a very weird viewing angle when we look at the results. I always advise to bend down , get low down and try to get eye level shots of tigers with pleasing backgrounds.

Another trick to photograph cooperative tigers who walk on the roads is to ask your gyspy driver drive in reverse, open the tail gate of the gypsy, lie low on the floor and fire away

We do it all the time in the jungles around Nagpur and we've never had the tiger walking in yet

regards,
Dr. Abheek Ghosh
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Old 16th May 2010, 19:27   #90
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Quote:
Originally Posted by abheekg View Post
sabyanag

All the cat photos seem to have been shot from a level high up.. maybe you were standing up in your gypsy seats while shooting them.Such high level shots usually give a very weird viewing angle when we look at the results. I always advise to bend down , get low down and try to get eye level shots of tigers with pleasing backgrounds.

Another trick to photograph cooperative tigers who walk on the roads is to ask your gyspy driver drive in reverse, open the tail gate of the gypsy, lie low on the floor and fire away

We do it all the time in the jungles around Nagpur and we've never had the tiger walking in yet

regards,
Dr. Abheek Ghosh
Thanks a lot for the tips. Yes, I did stand up before shooting. To be honest, I donot know the ABC of SLR photography yet. All my photos are basically P&S using a SLR camera in "auto" mode. I am trying to learn now ... doing experiments at home to get used to right exposure.

BTW, I have to buy a telephoto lens for wildlife photography. Do you have any suggestion ? "Canon 100-400mm L IS" or "Sigma 150-500 OS HSM" or anything similar ? Sigma is half the price but how much would be the compromize on image quality ?
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