Kabini Calling !

I have heard my friends describing the beauty of the forest of Kabini which is in the southern fringes of the Nagarhole National Park
where the wild-life is in abundance for a nature lover. After two years, I got a chance to visit Kabini on first week of March 2011. I asked few of my friends if they are willing to join me but nobody was interested as I was traveling on a weekday.

Finally booked my accommodation in JLR Kabini River Lodge, Kabini and my plan was to leave Bangalore early (around 5am) and take the following route - Ranganthittu -> Kabini -> Bangalore. As per my plan, reached Ranganthittu at 6:30am sharp. Two more photographers joined the ride.

We had a good time photographing few beauties in opposite light as well. Pied Kingfisher giving poses, Swallow’s, Spoonbill, Crocs, Intermediate Egrets, Openbill storks, Pelicans, Darters, Fruit bats, Stork-Billed Kingfishers, Peacocks.

We left Ranganthittu at around 10:30 for Kabini. On the way to Kabini through HD Kote road, we spotted common coots, Spot Billed Ducks and enjoyed the solo drive till Kabini. We reached exactly for lunch and to my surprise I heard a voice calling me and asking “You came without even telling me??” I just turned around to see my guru-g Mr.Karthikeyan from JLR. When he said he will be in JLR till March 5th I was relieved of my loneliness. Soon met Chirdeep , Amoghavarsha and got formally introduced as we were only facebook friends and NTP’ites.

March 2nd Evening Safari

I had excellent tea and some biscuits provided by JLR and took the evening safari. It was my first ever safari in the forests. The forest was dry and trees were leafless. I was thrilled as it gave perfect opportunity to spot and photograph a leopard with a chital kill on the barks of those trees. Yes, I was asking for more .

As we entered after signing in the record book, we got to see the Crested Serpent Eagle. It was against the light to photograph, but we just enjoyed it and moved on.

We had sightings of birds and herds of elephants that came near the river for some water. Had spent good time with a pair of small blue kingfisher with fish trying to feed its chicks(may be). They were going in and out of their nest. We heard alarm calls of chitals and moved from there towards the direction and did not find anything and missed photographing the Changeable Hawk Eagle

March 3rd Morning Safari

I don’t have words to describe this safari in particular. It was about 6 am already and I was up and ready by 5:45 am itself, waiting near the gate Nobody uttered a single word for sometime. We all were enjoying the breezy ride that morning, it was cold though.

I just prayed to god to show some mercy for a tiger sighting. We arrived at the safari road and we saw a herd of India Gaur and we all agreed not to stop there to take photographs.

We just kept going slowly. And then Amogh slowly whispered “Tiger on the band of the small lake”. My heart was beating fast to see it first. I saw it and tried to see through my camera and lost her. We slowly moved and got a good glimpse of her, though she was far away. She got up and started disappearing inside those thick bushes.

We all exchanged smiles and kept moving in search of her. Our jeep driver was tracking her prowl. After a minute, we again spotted her standing and looking directly at us. If I really want to describe it, it would be a heart pounding experience to have an eye contact directly with a tiger. She sat facing opposite to us and was watching her habitat.

20 minutes passed, she was just sitting without any movement. We were waiting for some drama to unfold, suddenly she jumped and ran towards prey may be chitals, there were so many alarm calls and cries for a minute, then the whole jungle got its silence back as if nothing happened there.

It was an unsuccessful hunt.

We moved hoping to see her again.

I decided to take boat safari in the evening to try my luck on the river side. It was a different experience on the river side, we saw the unusual Reef Heron which took off in front of us. Guru-g said, its unusual to see them in the inlands. Missed photographing my fav raptor, Osprey. It flew off as we approached near her.

March 4th Morning Safari

I prayed again the same way I did the previous day hoping for some luck. Till the fag-end of our safari, we didn’t find anything. I was scanning on top of the trees for leopards, bushes for tigers but no luck. As it is written in Corbett, “Dont worry if you have not seen a tiger, but the tiger has seen you” It is quite possible that a tiger would have watched us passing by.

As we were about to wrap our safari, we stopped for ID’ng a call of a bird or something like that, on our left side of the road, not far away, we saw a pair of common mynas perched. In less than 30 secs, a babbler flew out of the hole and the mynas raided the nest and in just 2 secs, I could see the myna picking up blue egg of the babbler. I could see from my camera that it is indeed damaging the eggs, the contents spilling out, one of the myna started flying and dropped the egg just 2-3 ft away from the nest.

An extract from Karthik’s blogabout this wonderful event is as below.

“Mynas, being secondary hole nesters, are known to regularly evict birds from their nest and occupy them. But this incident, where they even destroyed the egg and carried it away was interesting. Whether the mynas evicted the babbler to nest there themselves or simply to feed on the egg could not be ascertained.”

With all these wonderful events, I left JLR and headed back to the concrete jungle in Bangalore.

Posted by IT professional, wildlife photographer and NTP member, Kesavamurthy on his recent trip to Kabini.Keshava blogs at Vignettes of the Wild and you can read the entire list of sightings on his post .