After I had finished my Everest Base Camp Trek, I had decided on my next venture which was to visit Chitwan National Park. This was actually my third trip to this place and during this trip, I had spent a week here. The best way to get to Chitwan is a 3 to 4 hour drive to the village of Sauraha from Kathmandu. Here I had done a few jeep safaris plus some foot safaris as well. Foot safaris are more economical but there is always risk of wild animals and for this reason there are either one or two people while out on a foot safari.
Birding
Moorland Birds of Prey Workshop
I had attended a full day workshop organized by Danny Green last month in September which specialized in photographing various birds of prey such as Golden Eagle, Peregrine Falcon, Barn Owl and Eagle Owl. The workshop took place in a moorland environment which is a perfect backdrop to photograph these birds of prey. The workshop was attended by 6 to 7 other photographers all with very expensive camera gear. Here are some of my images which I captured during the workshop.
Testing the animal eye AF on the Canon EOS R6
Since I purchased the Canon EOS R6, I had taken a few nature photos at Sandwell Park which just a walking distance from my home in West Bromwich. The main intention was to try out how accurate the animal eye auto-focus was and I was quite happy with the way the camera would focus on the eye of the animal or bird even when moving. Here are some samples of what I had captured over the past couple of days.
Exploring Vagator
I had gone to the state of Goa back in February of this year. This was mainly for work as I was involved in creating behind the scenes content for the production company’s social media channels on Facebook and Instagram. The prime location was however in the Vagator area and this is where all the cast and crew were staying. After filming had commenced, I had decided to stay an additional 5 days before returning back to Dehradun. I had planned out which places I would visiting in the next 5 days so how of these 5 days, 4 days were spent in Vagator itself and on my last day, I had decided to go to Dudhsagar waterfalls and Panjim. Even in the month of February, the afternoons were quite hot and humid but by evening, the weather would become pleasant.
Birding at Assan Barrage
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.
Preening behaviour of jungle babblers
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.
Photographing Hornbills
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.
Raven with kill
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.
Same launch pad but different birds
Brown headed barbet nest building
Last month from my balcony, I had observed this brown headed barbet making its nest or home by creating a hollow within the tree. Birds mainly build nests for hatching of eggs and rasing the young but sometimes after making a nest, they simply abondon it. I find this surprising because I had observed the amount of hard work that is involved when creating a nest inside the tree. They are constantly at work everyday. Nests could be abandoned for two reasons. One is that the presence of a predator such a cat or it could have been a dummy nest.