Krishnan Photography

This image of mine won the First place in the 2010 National Wildlife Photo contest (U.S.A) ! The  NWF Photo contest is one of the Premier Wildlife Photo contests in the world.

http://www.nwf.org/News-and-Magazines/National-Wildlife/PhotoZone/Archives/2010/Photo-Contest.aspx

Some absolutely amazing pictures here.  Mine is the third from the bottom of the page.

Location : Uran, Near Mumbai, Maharashtra, India
Species: Baya Weaver

September 2009: The period immediately following the monsoon is breeding time for a lot of birds due to, abundant  availability of water and food. On the western coast of India., June thru August are when the monsoons bring in rains and are the wettest months of the year. The location is a place called Uran which is about 70kms south of Mumbai. The entire coast is a made of fairly large wetland areas and is home to a lot of birds. This particular location sadly has since been leveled for building a huge corporate park. This seems to be the story pretty much across most of India today. Uran has been my favorite haunt for bird photography. This location was introduced  to me by Adesh Shivkar, one of India’s uber birding experts. Until the leveling for development happened, I was a frequent visitor to Uran. I was my favourite weekend bird photography spot.

On this particular day, we looked around for our favourite spots but were aghast to see then completely leveled. Only this particular spot where the Baya Weavers made their nests was standing. So we decided to do some “flight photography” of the birds flying in and out of their nests. Sadly, this particular location is also gone under “the dozer” now.

Getting birds in flight is always a challenge. And, I try it whenever we can. No props or baits were used here. I setup my camera on a tripod behind some bushes, prefocussed on a nest and tried to click as the bird approached the nest. My camera setup

Camera Nikon D3, Nikon 600mm VR lens + Teleconverter TC14IIE, ISO3200, 1/1600, F8, Off camera Flash SB-800 with Better Beamer fresnel lens to extend flash range mounted on wimberley flash bracket, Manual Flash at 1/64th power , Gitzo 1548 Tripod with leveling base and Wimberley II gimbal.

I was truing to photograph one nest ( actually its a colony of nests). I saw two birds keep chasing each other. It was pretty impossible to get these in flight since they are so small & fast. I was pre focussed and hence was not trying to view thru the viewfinder. I was trying to trip the shutter by looking over the camera, by judging when the birds came into a zone I had marked in my mind.

This is when I was able to see , on the adjacent nest one bird had flown in and suddenly two more  dived in and hung. I instinctively shifted my camera to this nest, focussed and shot a series. The entire incident would have probably lasted 3-4 seconds. I frankly didnt realise what was going on until after I analysed the pictures.

I frankly felt “Yippe” ! Got a cool behaviour shot of what is essentially quite a common bird. Talk of being in the right place at the right time, with the right gear and most importantly looking in the right direction ! Had I been looking through  the viewfinder, I would have missed this action on the adjacent nest !

Weaver finches are very social birds and many species nest in colonies. In these situations it would be quite common to see males and females squabbling around the nest. Here’s an excerpt from the Wikipedia write-up on the Baya Weaver (quite a good one IMO).
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The males are polygynous, mating with 2 to 3 females one after another. Males build many partial nests and start attracting females. A male finishes the nest to its completion only after finding a mate, after mating the female lays about 2 to 4 white eggs and incubates them. The females are solely responsible for incubating and bringing up the brood. After mating with a female the male goes on to woo more females with its other nests. Females are known to lay their eggs in the nests of other females.
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More Likely:-
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From this I think you could hypothesise that perhaps two females are competing for the same nest, or perhaps one of the females was trying to lay eggs in another nest and was being dissuaded by the male and female who “owned’ the nest.

Less Likely:
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If the bird in the middle is indeed an immature, I doubt that the male and female above and below are the parents, because of the apparent aggression shown in the image. Maybe the young bird is a recent fledgling from another nest? But since the bird in the centre was flying rather well, I would doubt it to be an fledging.

This behaviour is pwehaps not an unusual happening in itself. I am sure it happens quite often. Only not many of us are around to notice it even when it does

From my 23rd floor apartment today evening 6PM. A quick, four shot hand held pano which I  stitched.

Sometime in the early eighties I had read Peter Mathiessen’s book “The Snow Leopard”. The book is about the legendary biologist George Schaller and his efforts to know about the Snow Leopard in its habitat.

Early nineties I met for the first time, my good friend Ajeet Bajaj. At that time, Ajeet had just started his adventure company called “Snow Leopard Adventures“. In 1992 March, I was attending the “Basic Mountaineering course” at the Himalayan Mountaineering Institute (HMI) Darjeeling. Thats when I saw the magnificient Snow Leopards for the very first time in my life, at the Darjeeling zoo.

A few days ago, I started to plan some of the trips for the next season and the Snow Leopard was right on top of mind. Today I got back from work and switched on the telly and guess what I saw, the documentary “The Snow Leopard – Beyond the Myth”. Now that got me googling the International Snow Leopard Conservancy programme in India.

Check these pics from an NG photographer Steve Winter > Snow Leopard
Steve’s Popular Photography interview
Follow Steve on his NG trails > Follow Steve

And here is a video clip on how Steve made those stunning Snow leopard images. >>Click Here

Searching for the Snow Leopard video.

Yep…got them Snow Leopards again on my mind and, I have always loved Ladakh ….

Picked out slides from my collection and scanned them in today. These slides are from the years 1996 thru 1998 .

Teasers below. You can view them all here> Ladakh.

This is the “basha” or hut I used to stay in

I also scanned in one really old Delhi Zoo slide ( 1985 ) of a Puma. Love this one

And the Black Panthers @ Delhi zoo in the year 1985 !

Today, after a long gap, I pulled out some old transparencies for scanning.

The 1994 Original Roadies

We had done a Pune-Cochin bike trip way back in April 1994 . Four guys ( Sandeep, Salil Shailesh and myself) on three bikes, a Rajdoot, a Yezdi and an Enfield Fury [ a Zundapp Kardan Sport 175 ( KS175) actually], on the Konkan coastal roads for eleven heavenly days. The trip was planned to coincide with the “Trichur Pooram“, the traditional mega Kerala Temple Festival which has a more than a few number of caparisoned elephants and only a few, hundred thousand people to watch the show

I still remember the bike silhouette pic. I shot that twisting back while riding pillion, helmet and all with the camera focussed at infinity. I had the “Pentax – ME Super” back then. A wonderful camera for sure.

Keeping with the theme of Kerala, I also scanned in a few slides of a temple that I do really like, the Ernakulam Shiva Temple. I happened to click a few frames duting the Temple festival in Dec 1999 enroute to my Diving holiday to Lakshadweep Islands.

During the temple festival the Deity of the Temple is brought home on an elephant and an offering is made to the God right at the house gates. Thats the two pics here. On the pic on the right is my maternal uncle making the offering with the temple elephant right outside my maternal home.

I also pulled a few landscapes shot whilst in the Andamans in 2004.