Common Golden-Backed Woodpecker

I could not come as close as I wanted , to photograph this Woodpecker ( Dinopium javanense) but will try my best the next time I come across him. The bird closely resembles the Lesser Golden-Backed Woodpecker. The bird works up on stems of old trees, tapping them to find rotten and hollow wood and then drilling hole to eat the beetles and insects hiding withing them. They also feed on ripe fruits ans sometimes nectar too.

Cattle Egrets

I have previously featured Cattle Egret ( Bubulcus ibis) on this blog, the reason I am featuring again is because, this time I spotted them in this special plumage of buff orange. This is the birds Breeding plumage. When in non breeding the bird resembles a little egret but in this season it is unmistakable . The bird is called a cattle egret because it is mostly seen with grazing cattle, stalking energetically alongside the animals , running around them and in between their legs, all for seizing insects that are disturbed by the movement of cattle.

Continuing from the previous post.
Mistake no. 6 : Setting up the tripod in a hurry: When photographing birds, the key is to be quite and still. Once you perch at a place, it is important you move very less. Hence it becomes very important to set yourself in a nice vantage point. Importantly keeping in mind the position of the sun and the favourite perching positions of the birds. It has has happened many times that when I get excited seeing a new bird, I just forget all of it and end up chasing away the bird.

Pied Kingfisher

In my September 2008 post I had featured a Pied Kingfisher sitting on a power cable; this time I was lucky enough to spot one engaged in fishing. Though I must admit that I could not get good close up images, but hopefully these convey its fishing technique.
The bird hovers over a potential fishing spot at about a height of 15-20 meters for a considerable period of time. When a fish comes within striking depth, it speeds itself towards the prey, with wings pulled by the sides. It dives into the water emerges with its prey and flies off to a convenient rock or branch, where the prey is battered before being swallowed. This is a very spectacular scene to watch and I enjoyed every bit if it.

Continuing From my previous post: ( 10 photography mistakes I knowingly commit)
Mistake 5:Using the Wrong Choice of metering:What would happen if you chose matrix metering for a photograph like the ones above?. The kingfisher forms a tiny part of the photograph, which is mostly sky otherwise. Hence the camera would expose for the bright sky and would choose a faster shutter speed. The sky would come very beautiful with all its clouds, but what would happen to the kingfisher? It would be a dark blob on the photograph. Fortunately for the above photograph I had used spot metering and metered the bird. But this does not always happen to me, many times I have photographed flying birds or birds at sea with the wrong choice of metering with the resulting photograph being truly unusable. Today I have made it a practice to look at the metering mode chosen before I venture into the clicking business. But we all have our memory limitations.

Tickell's Flowerpecker

Like I said on the post on 7th, I did wait for the bird under the tree to get a closer photograph and this is the best I could manage. The bird is such a restless one, that it hardly sat at any one place for more than a few seconds.

Continuing from the previous post ( Photography mistakes that I commit even after knowing)

Mistake4: Not carrying sufficient memory or charge: This one is self explanatory- carry extra memory and spare battery and its better to have large number of small capacity cards than one big card. If something goes wrong with once card, at least you have others. Now honestly, I don't have an extra memory card or a back up battery, in such a case the least I can do is download photographs at the first available opportunity and keep the memory card blank and ready. Similarly keep the battery charged up. But this is easier said than done and there have been times when I realised my memory was full and I had to return back with my task half accomplished. I know it but I still do it.

Black Kite

Black Kite ( Milvus migrans) is as large brown hawk and can be easily distinguished from similar birds by its forked tail. This is India's commonest raptor and found in most cities and towns. The bird is a masterful flier and scoops down of food scraps even in traffic congested roads avoiding the mess of telephone and electricity wires with ease. From earthworm to young disabled birds, from termites to lizards it eats it all and generally engages in regular tiffs with the local crow population. The bird spends a lot of time in air, circling in the sky and makes effective use of thermals for soaring.

Continuing from the previous post:
Mistake 3 : Not Shading my lense: Lense flare occurs when light hits the lense at an angle and starts bouncing around the inside of the lense. This causes light to do weird tricks including reducing contrast and making the photograph look hazy or sometimes even creating halos. Use the lense hood to prevent this , in a compact camera you can even use your hand to shade the lense. Just hold your hand cupped around the lense, in the direction of the strongest light source.
Ex. Both the photographs above were taken on the same day, from the same place and nearly at the same location. The first photograph was clicked as soon as I reached the spot and started to click, forgetting to fit in the hood. I fitted it once I noticed my mistake. Its only when I uploaded the photograph on the computer did I realise the difference the hood could make and felt it would be a nice example to put it up.
Sony A350 , 300mm , f/5.6 ,ISO 100 ,spot metering,

Tickell's Flowerpecker

Until I clicked this photograph, the smallest bird I photographed was the Spotted Munia this Tickell's Flowerpecker is about 8 cms, which is 2 cms smaller than the Munia. Also called as the pale billed Flower Pecker (Dicaeum erythrorhynchos) the bird landed up on a cherry tree on my backyard and flew off with a semi riped fruit. It then sat up on another tree a little further away and swallowed the entire berry, in one gulp! You can see in the photograph how big the fruit is with respect to its head. The bird loves the berries of Dendrophthoe and Viscum, two plant parasites of the mistletoe family and is responsible for the flourishing of the parasitic plant.
If the bird keeps visiting my backyard, then ill have to sit under tree one day to get a closer look at it. This bird very closely resembles a Plain flowerpecker, but this one has a flesh coloured beak compared to the black beak of the Plain flowerpecker.

Continuing from previous post:
Mistake No. 2 : Cluttering the frame: Trying to cram in too many things into one single image can mess up a photograph. This is especially important when shooting wildlife. With too much of attractive greenery around its tempting to stuff them all in and the creature only may get lost in the image. Ex. In the photograph above, there are just two elements, the bird and lots of leaves. When in fact, just beyond the frame there were 2 cherries and below the bird there was a sunbird. Had I moved my frame a little up I would even have got the blue sky. Now don't you think the small birdy would have got lost if I had tried to stuff in all these elements in the frame?

Inca Tern

Inca Tern (Larosterna inca) is a bird with a mustache or so it looks like. This bird is exclusively found in the islands of Chile and Peru and is a threatened bird today.
Sea birds like this Tern face a special food hazard, because of their lifestyle. The hazard is salt, which in large doses is poisonous, leading to dehydration and a overload on the kidneys. Yet seabirds inevitably absorb large quantity of salt water while feeding. The excess is disposed of by special salt glands in the head. The glands discharge a highly concentrated salt solution into the nostrils, from where it drips back into the sea. So efficient is this built in desalination plant that sea birds never need to drink fresh water. They extract all they want from the seawater. This I specifically noticed and mentioned in a older post on the Booby, where they spent 4-5 days on my ship feeding on fish at sea and never needing water to drink.

Sony A350 , 200mm lens, ISO400