I had heard and visualized about Thattedad (Salim Ali Bird Sanctuary ) but never been there. One of my friend Mr.Sanjoy Adak had visited my farm near Nagarhole National Park, he had scheduled his trip to Thattekad on 20th Jan to 23rd Jan 2012. We were discussing about his last year's trip to Thattekad, i was getting more interested but in fact last year I had missed the opportunity so this time no miss. He had his train tickets, I booked by bus to Aluva and we met at Aluva on 21st Jan 2012 morning. We hired a taxi to Thattekad its about an hour journey. Sanjoy had spoken to Girish who is our bird guide and also he owns a home stay inside the sanctuary. We reached the gate of Salim Ali Bird sanctuary by 11am. We checked in to home stay got fresh and had beautiful Kerala style home made brunch as we had not had our breakfast.
Sanjoy had a wish list of 30 species of birds (Lifers) to see & photograph.......It was decided that afternoon 3pm we will start our photography session, Girish arranged one more guide with us & promised to join all the remaining sessions for next two days. I was thinking a gypsy or a car will come to pick us up.... Sanjoy tells me, no sir we need to walk. OMG I was tired hearing that because carrying a tripod with big camera & lens & that too trekking in humid condition as it is a tropical forest it was like a blow for me... :( We started off from the Periyar river side, We saw our first bird of the trip Thick billed Flower pecker.
Then the real birding started, it was a bit difficult to carry all the camera gears but had to. After trekking for a while we started seeing good number of birds out of which my eyes locked on some movement inside the canopy it was orange in color, I called the guide who was ahead of me he was like wow sir its
Malabar Trogon
It was so difficult to shoot because of very low light condition, even though there was good sun light it was not enough for our camera due to thick jungle. After shooting this bird i said to Sanjoy, my day is done with this. We continued and sighted more birds which i will list it later. With this our 1st day photo session comes to an end. Back to cottage with reviewing our images and discussing we could have taken a shot like this like that all those...... but in nature birds gives only one chance to shoot, if you shoot you have the best or else wait for one more chance...........with a great dinner at Girish's home, day 1 comes to an end.
Day 1 sightings :
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Sanjoy had a wish list of 30 species of birds (Lifers) to see & photograph.......It was decided that afternoon 3pm we will start our photography session, Girish arranged one more guide with us & promised to join all the remaining sessions for next two days. I was thinking a gypsy or a car will come to pick us up.... Sanjoy tells me, no sir we need to walk. OMG I was tired hearing that because carrying a tripod with big camera & lens & that too trekking in humid condition as it is a tropical forest it was like a blow for me... :( We started off from the Periyar river side, We saw our first bird of the trip Thick billed Flower pecker.Then the real birding started, it was a bit difficult to carry all the camera gears but had to. After trekking for a while we started seeing good number of birds out of which my eyes locked on some movement inside the canopy it was orange in color, I called the guide who was ahead of me he was like wow sir its
Malabar Trogon
It was so difficult to shoot because of very low light condition, even though there was good sun light it was not enough for our camera due to thick jungle. After shooting this bird i said to Sanjoy, my day is done with this. We continued and sighted more birds which i will list it later. With this our 1st day photo session comes to an end. Back to cottage with reviewing our images and discussing we could have taken a shot like this like that all those...... but in nature birds gives only one chance to shoot, if you shoot you have the best or else wait for one more chance...........with a great dinner at Girish's home, day 1 comes to an end.
Day 1 sightings :
- Thick Billed Flower Pecker
- Racket tailed Drongo
- Bronzed Drongo
- Orange headed Thrush
- Jungle Owlet
- Malabar Trogon
- Golden Flame back wood pecker
- Pompadour Green Pigeon
- White Breasted King fisher
- Oriole
- Wiskerd Tern
- Red vented Bulbul
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