He called me last evening and said he has a very special surprise for me. A Colugo had entered one of the buildings next to the park and we had to go pick it up and release it back in the national park. It was dropped off at the zoo and we picked it up and drove to Bukit Timah Nature Reserve.

Colugo, also known as the flying lemur is one of the weirdest creature on earth. Its has a very weird skin, a strange membrane around the animal and is the most capable gliding mammal on earth (after bats of course). I first saw it in a David Attenborough documentary and been wanting to see it even since. The amazing thing about this mammal is that it can never stand on the ground like the bats, and can only glide for locomotion.

Colugo Cynocephalus volans

We reached the National park at 6:30pm and was just about the right time to release the Colugo. Since it was in a box, I didnt see it too well. We took it to a large tree and released it. Just as we opened the box, it leaped on Ben, and then jumped onto the bark of the tree and ran up. After going up, it disappeared. It took us a fraction of a second to realise that it has gone airborne. It was one of the most wonderful sights on earth to see as it glided to a large ficus tree a good hundred meters away.

We got back to the office and then started searching for the resident Colugos. Today it was not there on the tree which it’s usually found. After a bit of searching, I suddenly heard a ‘thud’ on a tree next to me and then realised it was Colugo which landed on a tree very close to me. I whipped my camera out and shot the photograph below. I made sure I did not use a flash and shot this only with a torch light.

Philippine Colugo Cynocephalus volans (Nikon D700 with 70-200mm | 1/25 sec at f/2.8 @ ISO 2000)

This disappeared into the canopy and soon after, we bumped into the team from the National Parks who were doing their monthly night survey of the park. They invited me to join and I was more than happy to go along. I was just not prepared for the humidity, but the next 4 hours of walk through the forests was amazing. We saw the Long-tailed nightjar, Common Palm civet, Red-cheeked Flying Squirrel, Malayan Giant frog and dozen of amazing rainforest trees in bloom.

Colugo carrying a young one

Along the trek, we also spotted 3 more Colugos and this one was carrying its young one along with it. We all got back late night, had a data sharing meeting and called it a day. It was excellent to survey a new forests and was quite happy to have identified most of the species myself.

I strongly hope, other big cities learn from Singapore (and New York) on how to manage urban forests. Even if they don’t care about the tree cover, at least realise that unlimited clean water supply can only come from the watersheds that these forests provide.

The Green Vine Snake is sometimes called as the ‘Eye Pecker’ because people believe it pecks humans eyes. In this picture it was quite agitated and was trying bite us off. Another amazing thing about this snake is that it can extend half of its body into midair when crossing a branch. I managed to capture another great wallpaper photograph of it standing in the air. And guess who’s hand it was standing on when I took this picture ?

At Bandipur, I got to see tons of elephants. In 2 days, I think I saw more then 50 elephants and they posed for me real nice. On one of the days, me and bunch of other folks trekked from Gopalswamybetta to the entrance of the national park. It was almost a full day trek and I’ve had one of the scariest encounter’s in the wild. While we were walking, we heard elephants near by, but we could not pin-point their exact location. We were searching for them and suddenly, this male tusker is heading straight for us (backwards). This elephant was fighting with another one and in that process, they came across us. I don’t know if they realised we were there, because we just turned around and ran like there was no tomorrow. We only stopped after we ran for half a kilometer. For the first time in my life, I ran for my life in the jungle.

From Bandipur, we headed to BR hills. Remember a while back, when I was accepted into the monkey family at BR hills ? Well, apparently monkeys have quite a good memory. It was very touching when I got back to the forest after almost a month and all these monkeys came rushing towards me and this young fella who gotten quite used to me, just came running and jumped on my shoulder. Then he spent an whole hour playing with me. I’ve put up bunch of those pics.

Jane goodall moment

Also at BR hills, I’ve had my best sighting of the Tiger till date. ravi and his brother were there too, to witness the tiger. It was 8:30pm in the night and we were driving on the main road in the jeep. We spotted the tiger and I stopped the jeep right next to it. The tiger was so close, one could have touched the tiger from the jeep. Unfortunately, I was driving, so could not get good shots, but it was amazing. Infact it kept on moving up and down the road, and we kept on following the tiger. At one point, I was really close at which point the tiger started to growl. We spent a good 15min with this tiger.

Wild tiger, up close and personal in darkness with my maglite

Another picture of the tiger where my flash actually fired. I’ll post rest of the pics in the coming days. Ok, now it’s time to get back to work.

Anyway was a lovely sighting and something that I will remember for a long time to come. Also got to see the tiger after almost 2 months.

This owl is the Oriental Bay Owl. People thought this bird was extinct in India till 1992 and till date only 2 – 3 birds have been spotted in India. When we actually saw the bird and started shooting, the bird was in a weird angle and we were not getting any good shots. Then the skies opened up and we had to rush to a watch tower. After the rain, Yathin and Vijay wanted to get back, but I stayed back in the forest with the guide to shoot this bird. After spending half an hour, he finally looked at me and I got my shot. Only after coming back that I realised this was the only photographic evidence of the bird till date.

Now how often does that happen ? Another rare bird I got to capture was the Srilankan frogmouth.

Since Yathin did a lovely trip report, I’ll skip mine. My Anamalais pictures are finally up.

Things have been crazy since I’ve come back from the trip. No net access, broken car, lot of running around the town this week. Hopefully I will sit around and upload all my pics this weekend.

The trip itself was excellent. I got to photograph Oriental Bay Owl, which apparently has not been photographed by anyone till date (Subspecies from south India). Got to photograph another lovely and rare bird named Frogmouth. Trekked a lot and I’m still getting over all the leech & tick bites. The rains have been a letdown though. Where has the monsoon gone ?

Anyway here’s a picture to start off from the trip. Gives you the feel of the place.

I open up google image search and ask them to tell me what they’d like to see. The list went on something like America, helicopter, plane, buildings etc.. I show them the thumbnails and you should have seen the excitement on their faces. One guy jumped and called all the people around and I sat here for an hour showing them pic by pic of various things. The link’s very bad here to show them too many things, but I promised them I will get all the pics and videos from bangalore and show them urban life.

I plan to leave the laptop with them later in the day and show them how to use google image search. They still cannot understand how I can talk to folks around the world using the computer and the internet. For them Yahoo messenger is voodoo magic.

In other news, we got charged by a big female elephant yesterday (Too bad I was not carrying my camera then). The emphasis here is to track big game and the drivers and trackers seem least interested about the birds , insects and plants. Will try to change that in the coming days.