Never give up- lesson again learned from a unusual visitor. After a tiring Malampuzha Sunday birding with CNS, I wanted to see the unusual visitor, the Isabelline Wheatear which came all the way to give Dharshan for us. I was very specific to see it before it says bye bye. All credit goes to Kishore for accompanying me to that place along with Senthil and Thirumoorthy. As usual we saw common kestrel, I. courser, spotted owlet and Chestnut-bellied Sandgrouse. We did not gave much importance to those ( once most sought after species) as we were on mission to wheatear. Pipit gave us very hard time by constantly showing up, every time we see one we tell to our selves that it should be wheatear and at last it would turn out be the pipit. We lost all hope and went for harrier and owl sight, which was fruitful. Though we had a very good sightings of other birds half heartedly we decided to call it for the day. And on return almost on exit, we saw one on the pillar and Kishore asked me to take a photo and I told this will also end up in pipit, and without any expectation i took one picture and turned out to be the one we were looking for. We were jubilant and got few good images. Thanks to Kishore and his friend Gajamohan for sighting it first and helped almost everyone to see it. Hope it comes back next year. Fingers crossed.
Magical sighting!
Myself along with Byju and two other friends went on a mission to sight vultures. As we were camping in the core, we had a chat about chances of sighting the big cat, as Byju is yet to see the big cat in wild after visiting many RF across india, the urge for it is intense. Myself and other two wild counterpart has seen it many times and we promised that we will make sure that we don't vacate the place with out showing one to Byju. The next day morning, we were having a cup of black tea sitting on the front of our camp which faces the opposite hill. Suddenly Mr. Jayashankar said he has seen a tiger on the opposite hill, since the last night discussion was so intense i told him not to bully Byju so early in the morning, during that talk the other guy took a record shot and showed us that it's there. Even then we are not convinced and asked him to show the date, at its true, we can't believe what’s just happening. Then I rushed inside and took my camera to take a shot of it, unlucky it's not there. It's almost 2 hr we searched for it and suddenly I saw one to my 3'O clock position and told others, but the guy who took the first picture told its in 9'0 clock position sitting on the rock. I was shocked and told to myself what happened to my eyes. On zooming it I was shell shocked to see 2, one to the right of the frame what I told and the other to the left of the frame what the guy told, I shouted it's 2, again on further zooming I saw 3 tigers, again shouted sir it's 3. And within minutes Byju shouted it's 4. What a time we had on that day, and in between that time Kishore called me from other camp saying he saw sloth Bear but I told him we are seeing 4 tigers. We all left that place, remembering it for ever. After that now I think Byju saw more than 15 tigers with in 6 months in different RF. The first one took 15 years but after that 15 tigers took only 6 months.
Vulture Survey, Kalangal, May-Dec 2017
Sravan .K
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