Bharatpur Photographs

The Bharatpur photographs are finally up. This is one of my best catch of the lot.



Snake Bird – Threat display
Bharatpur, Rajasthan, 4 Mar 2006


This Darter (Snake bird) let me go real close for me to get a good portrait shot. At one point, I was too close and I had stepped into the birds comfort zone. The bird turned towards me and performed this display to scare me away. Of course I did get scared, as this was a big bird and it could jump on me and injure me quite badly. Check out rest of the pictures too.

49 Comments

  1. amoghavarsha · March 9, 2006 Reply

    I’m blown! Out of words!

  2. latelyontime · March 9, 2006 Reply

    Unbelievably awesome. I almost wanted to run away from the screen when I saw that shot.

  3. theju · March 9, 2006 Reply

    Reminded me of the “My last photograph” email forward i received a few days back. Amazing shot.

  4. prashanthks · March 9, 2006 Reply

    son-of-a… too cool. how huge are they? and do they really attack if threatened? I think it would if it were defending its eggs/nest, but otherwise wouldnt it just fly away?

  5. admin · March 9, 2006 Reply

    This bird has a very sloppy flight. So most of the time, they like to just sit on a tree stump near the water and fish for food.

  6. admin · March 9, 2006 Reply

    heh thanks dude.. you must go to bharatpur. Even with a wide-angle lens, you will get excellent shots.

  7. say_yes04 · March 9, 2006 Reply

    Nice, Didnt you hire some dude to tag those pictures better?

  8. admin · March 9, 2006 Reply

    tag the pics ? You mean put them in a tree structure ?

  9. rythm · March 9, 2006 Reply

    Phew!! Really awesome pics.

  10. gromhellscream · March 9, 2006 Reply

    Awesome snaps kallu:)

  11. Anonymous · March 9, 2006 Reply

    hmmm

    so this gonna be another award winning pic kal?;-)
    i hope so

  12. say_yes04 · March 9, 2006 Reply

    no no better captions 😉

    you know that guy with a guitar who was supposed to write better captions.

    /me [g,d,&r]

  13. admin · March 9, 2006 Reply

    Aha yes.. no sign of him lately ;).. are the sisters back in town ?

  14. sainath · March 9, 2006 Reply

    I guess ur “current mood” in this post reflects it all 🙂
    amazing snaps !!

  15. deponti · March 9, 2006 Reply

    Too MUCH…

    Been waiting patiently for the Bharatpur snaps; saw you online this morning when I logged on, and the pics hadn’t yet come on….so I had to go out and do odd jobs…and when I come back…the pics are there, as well as 15 comments already!! Shows that when it comes to checking your pics, I am a long way back in the queue!

    I have so much of work to do and here I am, unable to tear myself away from these beautiful birds….I read someone’s comment that they wanted to run away when they saw the Darter snap….*I* am glad I don’t take photographs!

    The new KFC in Bangalore stands for Kalyan Fan Club!!

    ….I’m trying to find better words than the hackneyed “Great” and “Superb”…but might wind up using them after all!

  16. amoghavarsha · March 9, 2006 Reply

    I think its more of post-processing some 10gigs *accomplishment*

  17. admin · March 9, 2006 Reply

    Yep.. two days of hard work. I still have to do the thattekad ones.. thankfully they are not too many.

  18. admin · March 9, 2006 Reply

    Re: Too MUCH…

    hehe thanks for the kind words.. they sure are flattering.

    I had lot of fun just processing these pics. Its tough to choose the best 5% from 500 – 600 pictures. I might spend some time later today to process the thattekad snaps too.

  19. cyberscorpion · March 9, 2006 Reply

    Awesome Shots Kalyan…. Is it the latest 70-200mm f/2.8 VR lens ??? Awesome Optics…

  20. mujib · March 9, 2006 Reply

    Excellent pictures.

  21. patrodz · March 9, 2006 Reply

    Neat pics, man 🙂

  22. shruthi_dipali · March 9, 2006 Reply

    amazing stuff kalyan..

  23. andsoitgoeson · March 9, 2006 Reply

    great pics…. the second pic of the owl is great too… what camouflage.. what the hell… they are all great

    cheers

  24. andsoitgoeson · March 9, 2006 Reply

    just a question.. do you use pshop on any of them? ever? or generally untouched?

  25. admin · March 9, 2006 Reply

    I use nikon capture to open the raw files to do bit of adjustments and also resizing for the web. It’s almost impossible to live without little bit of post-processing 🙂

  26. admin · March 9, 2006 Reply

    It’s few years old. I have been using it for more then a year now and most of my pics have been taken with this lens. I, for one, swear by this lens. Very very sharp and works great in low light conditions

  27. mekin · March 9, 2006 Reply

    Great shots man …
    🙂
    I’ll need permission to make few of them wallpapers & get larger versions ..

  28. praveenkumarg · March 9, 2006 Reply

    The best part of all these trips apart from the awesome pics is we learn so much about nature and its beings !

  29. Anonymous · March 9, 2006 Reply

    Great Pictures

    Hey Great pictures, I am visiting your site for past one year. Now days I changes my desktop background when you uploads any new slot of pictures. This time I have chosen “Ducks flying” picture. This picture gives feeling that we are flying with them.
    Great!!! Great !!!

    Chaitanya Jakhadi.
    (Mumbai)

  30. ravishankar · March 9, 2006 Reply

    Fantastic pics

    All the pics are fantastic.
    I guess one among your many missions is accomplished 🙂

  31. Anonymous · March 9, 2006 Reply

    pics and the Jackal Crossing

    🙂
    hello.

    i especially liked the ‘jackal crossing’. looks funny and cute in a way. jackal just crossed the street without any care for the world. he just crossed. period. :D. such a pity sometimes that wildlife isnt that wild anymore yeah? and also, i like ‘hide and seek’, a lot. good that you got to play for 3 days with the bird.

    got introduced to your blog by some online acquaintance. also saw and read when you were featured by beyond shots. so you might want to add me in your watchlist, as i might be stalking you once in a while. :p

    – r/stan, philippines.

    p.s. really neat shots you have here. i cant quite believe its done by a neophyte, as you claim you are.

  32. sunson · March 9, 2006 Reply

    This one is amazing. But I love the Pied king fisher diving shot more 🙂

    Beautiful how everything about the Pied kingfisher seems to be selected for that dive. A huge head (and probably strong skull too?), Longish beak. Its one thing to read about how Natural selection ‘builds’ such survival machines, its another thing to see them 🙂

  33. kalyancreddy · March 9, 2006 Reply

    Great work, its good to look at the perfect pictures you take and to read a lot about the birds/animals from your trips. I’d recommend your blog to my cousins aged between 08 and 15 to follow-up your work, its like watching National Geographic or Animal Planet. I am amazed at how you find time for all this adventure.

  34. ashwinne · March 10, 2006 Reply

    There is something very primordial about this photo. Reminds me of Jurassic Park and also that birds had dinosaurs somewhere in their lineage. Loved it!

  35. prady · March 10, 2006 Reply

    Cool

    Huh .. Phew .. Sheesh .. Wow .. Great ..

    The snake bird .. yeah I think I saw this bird at Ranganthitoo. Is this the bird when it lands on water gets almost completely submerged except for its neck and head ? Its not a really large bird is it ?

  36. admin · March 10, 2006 Reply

    Let me know if you need any higher-res ones

  37. admin · March 10, 2006 Reply

    That, my friend is what I really hope to achive with these photographs. Looks like I might actually be getting there.

  38. admin · March 10, 2006 Reply

    Re: Great Pictures

    Yep. I wish I had a better picture of that, but could not manage it. Let me know if you need high-res pics

  39. admin · March 10, 2006 Reply

    Re: Cool

    Yep, it’s quite huge. Don’t get it confused with the cormorants, which are quite small compared to the darter.

  40. admin · March 10, 2006 Reply

    Heh yeah.. this is one of those birds, which is really sloppy at flight.. and evolving into a total non-flying bird. I will soon post a pic of another bird named frogmouth.. now that really look straight out of Jurassic park

  41. admin · March 10, 2006 Reply

    I just found time and now back to the grind. Might make it somewhere by the end of the month. It helps to have free weekends 🙂

  42. admin · March 10, 2006 Reply

    But there are everywhere for you to see. I should do a photo essay on it, one of these days.. and I specifically want to give importance to plants 🙂

  43. admin · March 10, 2006 Reply

    Re: pics and the Jackal Crossing

    Hello there, Glad to see someone from philippines reading this blog.

    Bharatpur is different. The whole park is only 25 sq km. So there is not much place for humans and animals to stay isolated. There was a tiger in this park till last year too it seems. It died of natural causes and they do not exist here anymore.

    and yes, I’m still very much a novice. Been doing serious wildlife photography for just slightly more then a year now

  44. milin · March 10, 2006 Reply

    Hey….

    Amazing….. as usual!

  45. sunson · March 10, 2006 Reply

    Definitely… Please do write up. It might make folks like me get interested in plants 🙂 But right now, am so into genetics that I would love to go study more formally. Darwin is my God 😉

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