Kanha Birds

Birds, birds, and more birds!

Two scops owls blending into tree bark. I could have looked at this all day and not seen the owls.

A brown wood owl (so we were told, but it isn't on my checklist. Gotta wait for my bird book to come on the "slow boat".)

Crested serpent eagle.

A grey-headed fish eagle. I had hoped that my photos of this bird would have come out better -- but it was difficult light to focus in. I loved the all-white legs.

The ever-present lesser adjutant stork.

Black stork?

An egret with a "goodie" in its bill.

This kingfisher looks to be eating a dragonfly.

A cormorant and an Indian pond heron.

A solitary grebe.

All of a sudden, two grebes rose up from the pond waters.

Peacocks were everywhere.

Peacocks were especially iridescent in the early morning light.

Hoopoes were quite common.

Another hoopoe.

Kanha National Park

Kanha National Park is the location of Rudyard Kipling's The Jungle Book. It's in a remote area of Madhya Pradesh and is denser forest ("jungle") than Bandhavgarh. The tigers were just as elusive, but Kanha has even more diversity of mammals and birds.

Since animals and birds tend to be most active at dawn and sunset, we started in the jeeps before sunrise.

On the way between the park and our resort hotel, we drove through the midst of lush agricultural lands.

This is typical of the several villages we also drove through. Cattle live in the street-side structures; homes are on the other side of an interior courtyard. Not all the villages were electrified, but obviously this one was.

One of our adventures was to ford a river in the jeep. We had made a few trips across small streams, but nothing like this river. It was even more exciting fording the river in total darkness on our return trip.

Obviously, the river is quite shallow, but it was still unnerving to be driving through so much water.

The grasses in the meadows were among the most beautiful I have ever seen.

Another sunrise photo.

Just after breakfast on our last morning. No safari, because we had a 6.5 hour drive to the airport.

Bandhavgarh Mammals

There are three species of deer in Bandhavgarh.

The spotted deer were the most common. The males still had velvet on their antlers.

Sambar are very large deer. The males have a rough mane a their neck, and most had already rubbed away the velvet on their antlers.

The does are a bit smaller, but still large.

Another sambar doe.

A small langur sits in the fork of a tree.

Langurs were the most common monkey. We also saw rhesus macaques.

Wild boar looked to be best left alone.

A wild boar family.

The smallest mammal we saw -- the Indian hare.

This is the closest we got to tigers -- fresh pug marks.

Lots of fresh pug marks -- they are huge -- close to 6 inches across.

The tire tracks are fresh, but the pug marks are even newer. This tiger must have been laughing at us from the bush it was so close.

Bandhavgarh Spiders

Who knew that I could make an entire page just with spiders?

In the early morning, there are hundreds of huge spider webs glistening in the dew. 

From a distance, all the spiders look alike, but some are more colorful than others.

These are all large spiders -- about 4 inches in length.

Bandhavgarh Birds

Our objective was to see a tiger or two, but that wasn't to be. But we did see an astounding variety of birds.

Among the largest of the birds we saw is the lesser adjutant stork -- a close relative of the marabou stork we saw in Tanzania.

This small owl blended in perfectly with the tree bark. I think it's one of the scops owls, but like most of these birds, full identification will have to wait until I get my bird book back -- it's in our sea shipment, and probably won't arrive until February.

A different species of stork? Identification awaits….

We saw a number of these impressive eagles. I think it is a crested serpent eagle.

There are three species of parakeet in Bandhavgarh. This is the ubiquitous rose-ringed parakeet that we have seen throughout India.

The plum parakeet has a brilliant a rose-colored head.

The Indian roller doesn't look too impressive just sitting in a tree, but ….

… in flight the iridescent blue wings are a show-stopper.

Another bird awaiting identification.

And another one I haven't identified (yet).

Bandhavgarh Tiger Reserve

Last week we had an opportunity to tour two of India's premier tiger reserves with old friends from the U.S. Our first stop was Bandhavgarh in Madhya Pradesh.

Our safaris started at dawn. The temperature wasn't bad -- until you were driving in a open-air jeep. Then the wind-chill made it quite chilly.

"Jungle" is the Hindi word for "forest". Bandhavgarh is an old hunting reserve of the maharajas. Some of the reserve is open meadows -- former agricultural fields -- and some of it is forest.

With 6 of us on safari, we needed two jeeps. Here are our traveling companions enjoying the brisk morning ride.

Years ago, tourists rode elephants to see the wildlife. Today they are used exclusively for patrolling.