Bird-Watching..

The birds I saw were quite the members of the avian populace, but the seasoned reader would be aware of the bird-watching opportunities in Mumbai. And he would also appreciate the need for a good lens, possibly a Telephoto, for the pursuit. I was missing the lens, but the birds were there alright.

I was honestly astounded by kind of bird-life to be found in a suburban backyard of one of India's largest cities, teeming with people, auto-rickshaws, BEST buses, hand-carts, zipping two-wheelers and annoying cyclists. Its open spaces are being gobbled up by high-rises, that are growing at such an alarming rate, that only the rocketing real estate prices can keep pace with them.

Rose-ringed parakeets are the most common species of parakeets found in India and can often be heard in the winter mornings, their calls carrying far through the crisp clear air. They travel in large flocks, and favour certain trees, which bear pods that they feast on. But one morning I also saw them alight en-masse on my terrace parapet, which to me was quite bold of them. One of them kindly obliged to pose for me on a televsion cable wire.

The flock did not shy away while I stood there clicking away for I was worth. They only dispersed in a cacaphony of screeches and went over to a nearby peepul tree when a large black jungle crow flew over.

Now this tree seemed to be a favourite with a lot of different kinds of birds, and one morning I had the privilege of seeing the very elusive female Indian cuckoo sunning herself on a bough. A female cuckoo looks surprisingly like a hawk, with her patterned feathers, her curved bill and her uncannily hawk-like size and shape. Her red eye, so different from the tawny grey eyes of a hawk, is perhaps the give-away though. The male cuckoos or Koels, as they are called in India, can often be heard singing away to glory, and can also be seen much more easily- they are glossy black, and are often sighted as they flee, chased by a pack of crows. This is a very planned action though, for this is when Mrs. Koel gets into her act, laying her eggs into the unwitting crow's nests.

After a couple of sightings like these, I decided to get up early more often. My sacrifice of a warm blanket on a cold winter morning did not go unheeded(yes, it can get cold in Mumbai on winter mornings!) I saw a fork-tailed Drongo on one of those days. This glossy black bird has a very sweet high-pitched whistle, and can be sighted much more often in the country-side, perched on telephone wires to catch the morning sun. Insects are a favourite food, and I've seen these birds twist and twirl above the crop-line as they chase after fleeing insects.

I also had the pleasure of seeing a crow-pheasant, more than once. It lived in a small clearing overgrown with weeds behind my building. It was quite a large bird, with a shiny black head, a beady red eye, and rich glossy coffee brown wings and back. Apparently, it didn't like flying very much, and preferred to stay on the ground, scratching for insects like a hen. It was careful to keep out of reach of the stray dogs that chased it though, and on such occasions, showed that it could indeed fly if needed. It's called 'Bhaaradwaj' in the local language, and sighting it is said to be lucky according to folklore. So I unwittingly found myself glancing out the back window every morning before it was time to go out for the day.

Coppersmith Barbets were among the more exotic birds to be seen. With it's bright red forehead, white breast and green back and wings, this bird makes up in colour what it lacks in size. Smaller than a sparrow, I often first saw them as bright red moving spots in the green canopy. Their monotonic call, however, was much more familiar, (and is what gives them their name - it sounds like a copper-smith striking metal with a hammer).

But the best of them all was a golden-yellow and black beauty, which I had seen flash by my window more than once. I was very happy to see the Golden Oriole one morning, perched on a nearly leafless tree. The yellow was quite shocking actually, especially when the bird flew by, and you were left wondering what that flash of yellow was. It is a larg-ish bird, and very handsome indeed. The black and white bars on its wings give it a very elegant look. And on that day, he had decided to do some sun-basking with the missus. The female oriole was equally elegant, though less strikingly coloured. She too had the kohl-lined eyes and the deep black wing bands, but hers was a more pale green than a shocking yellow. Both of them stayed there for quite some time, in conjugal bliss, at times talking Oriole to each other. As the sun got a little warmer, both of them flew away to a nearby shady tree.

The Last Great Wilderness

Yellowstone National Park  is one of the last remaining pieces of large untouched temperate wildernesses. Windswept moors, steep broken cliffs, vast stands of dark conifers and swift frothing rivers, all make up Yellowstone.

The park has been blessed with a rich variety of wild life, including elk,bison,brown bear,grizzlies, wolves and coyotes. This magnificent bull elk in the photo had settled down to chewing the cud right next to the road, and refused to move inspite of us photographers. His unmoving countenance allowed me to shoot him at a low shutter speed in the fading light of the twilight. I could even avoid the flash and prevent a red-eye.

Yellowstone however has some unique geological features thanks to its location on a hotbed of volcanic activity. The core of the park sits on a 28-47 mile caldera or basin, that had collapsed during the last volcanic eruption here about 600,000 years ago. The boiling hot magma under the earthś crust is unusually close to the surface here, and is responsible for the unique geothermal features of this region.

Yellowstone has geysers (pronounced ´guy-sers´ in American English), hot water springs and pools, often with brilliantly coloured deposits around their rims, steam vents and mud volcanoes. In addition to Old Faithful, the most famous geyser in the world, Yellowstone has many more.Hereś an image of a geyser about to erupt, taken at high speed in the blazing afternoon sun.

We had the perfect spring weather on our trip to the Yellowstone and the Grand Teton National Parks. Unpredicatable though the weather was, the spring air was refreshingly clear and crisp when the sun did come out. The Nissan Altima we drove was a driving pleasure, and the magnificent vistas meant that my camera was spoilt for choice. This picture of the Idaho river with the montains of Yellowstone as the backdrop was taken enroute the park.

Yellowstone has a huge lake, made up of a portion of the caldera which is now submerged. The lake too has many underground vents releasing hot water close to the shore. This prevents patches along the coast of the lake from freezing over, while the rest is covered by thick ice for most of the winter. In this photo you see one such volcanic vent, seen against the calm and brilliant blue waters of the lake.

A surreal feel envelopes this photograph taken from some distance along the shore of the lake. The picture was clicked from a high point, and you can clearly see the unfrozen coastline of the lake, followed by miles of frozen ice stretching to the mountains in the horizon. It was a brilliant sunny day and the blues of the sky and the water were incredible.

Winter lingers much longer here than the rest of the country, and while the east coast was well into summer, parts of Yellowstone still looked as if in the dead of winter. This black-and-white picture taken at the Lewis river enroute Grand Teton might well pass off as a winter scape.

The highways in Yellowstone are often the best places to watch wildlife. As we were travelling along an open moor, we spotted a pair of grizzlies in the distance. Unfortunately, they were too far away for me to get them on the camera, but I did capture this father and son duo watching the bears.

Yellowstone is a photographer's paradise, just as it is a nature lover's eden. It keeps you on your toes all the time, you never know what surprises might turn up round the next bend in the road. The greatest moment for us on this trip was when we locked eyes with a wolf. This was a little after we photographed that elk in the brush at twilight. As I was driving, my friend practically jumped out of his seat (and the car) and made me come to a screeching halt a few hundred metres up ahead. We walked back the road, four guys unarmed guys, alone on a huge grassland, with the night closing in fast, knowing that there were wolves out there, and we weren't at our bravest. We neared the spot where we thought we had seen it, and were stopped in our tracks by a huge head appearing out of the bushes.

To look straight into the yellow eyes of a wolf in the wild does make your blood curdle.Especially when your are on his terrain, his kingdom, where he is in his element. That moment is pretty much frozen in our memories.

I guess he was pretty averse to our company as well, because the huge head slowly retracted back into the bushes, and we saw him cross the road a few yards futher down, scattering a herd of elk on the other side as he went through the brush.