Assan Barrage is a small dam located around 40km from Dehradun. The dam is 287.5m long and has water all year round as it is fed water from the Asan river. This dam is responsible for creating of the Asan reservoir or also know as Dhalipur lake. This lake is a good location to view a number of water birds and migratory birds that arrive here in the winter months. The best time to visit between October and December as this attracts a lot of migratory birds to the lake.
Here are some photos of the common mormon caterpillar seen in the garden area where I currently reside. The common mormon is a common species of the swallowtail butterfly. These are found all across Asia.
I had recently visited Patna after 11 years and was there mainly to visit family. We had flown in from Dehradun to Patna with a stop in Delhi. Anyway I was there for three weeks. There were alot of other places that I could have visited near Patna but maybe in next trip but during this trip, I had made two visits to Sanjay Gandhi Biological Park. It is also know as Patna zoo and is located off Bailey Road in Patna. The zoo houses over 800 animals and birds but it was not possible to photography every single animal there.
Sometimes one can get amazing landscapes without having to travel far. Here I am sharing four images of the same viewpoint taken from the roof terrace of my apartment building. Each image is unique in its own way. Clouds add mood and interest to the image. Without the clouds, the same images would look less interesting or boring. The buildings in the foreground lead up to the horizon point with the mountains and clouds appearing in the background. This is what I feel makes the image quite interesting.
Here I was able to capture the preening activity of jungle babblers, taken right from my apartment in Dehradun. Birds preen mainly to remove dust, parasites and also to straighthen their feathers to help in flight. These birds are quite commonly seen in private gardens and woodlands.
Here one afternoon in August, me and a few friends had planned to visit Shikhar falls for a small trek. This was once the lockdown at been relaxed. With this in mind, I decided to go with my Canon camera gear to take some amazing landscapes. For these shots, I had used the Canon 5D Mark III and Canon 17-40mm f/4 L lens, Mefoto Globetrotter tripod, 10-stop ND filter and remote shutter release.
Grey hornbills are commonly seen in Dehradun but Oriental pied hornbills are very rarely seen within the main city of Dehradun. It was great seeing Oriental pied hornbills without having to travel far and this was the only occassion I had seen one and also was able to photograph it using my Canon gear.
This is a series of images where one morning I had observed a raven feasting on probably the carcass of a pigeon. The raven with its kill landed on the branch of the tree and as soon as I observed this sight, I then rushed to get my camera and took this series of shots before it flew off. A raven can be distinguished from a crow in a number of ways as ravens are much larger and the beaks are bigger and curvier compared to the beak of a crow which are slimmer and straighter.
These squirrels are found commonly all across India. Surprisingly all these images were shot within a ten minute time frame. It was great observing these squirrels displaying certain behaviours and all were shot from the balcony of my apartment here in Dehradun.
