Naturalist's Corner - The mynahs and the babbler

The location : Kabini River Lodge (a unit of Jungle Lodges & Resorts Ltd.)

Being the month of March, the forests were dry, the trees almost leafless. And, I had decided to go on a safari to see if I can improve my rather dismal track record with the cats. The morning was eventful. Shortly after we entered the forests we did get lucky. We saw a tiger for a good period of time before it decided to melt away into the forest.

The other wildlife enthusiasts in the jeep and I kept busy looking at birds and various other things that showed up as we drove along. We managed to take pictures of some of the birds too.

We had stopped the vehicle at one point listening to the sounds of the jungle. Not far from the road was a tree with a bend in the bole at about 15 ft from the ground. It seemed as if a branch had broken off at that point and a cavity had formed subsequently. A pair of Common Mynas landed at this place on the tree and they started calling in their usual demeanour. A cacophony with head bobbing and all ensued. I was watching the happening with my naked eyes while other co-passengers were looking at the drama through their long lenses.

Perhaps, all of 30 seconds lapsed when suddenly a Jungle Babbler flew out from amidst the mynas. The babbler must have been sitting inside this hollow. We were all caught by surprise by the sudden emergence of the babbler. The moment the babbler flew out of the hole the mynas put their head into the hole. The next moment we saw one of the mynas with the blue egg of the babbler in its beak, the contents spilling out. The mynas had managed to crack the egg and had brought it out. Even as we watched, the mynas flew away from the tree. We could not ensure if the mynas eventually fed on the contents of the egg or simply dropped it some distance away.


Once the mynas left, the babbler came back to the nest. It sat there, looked around, peeped into the nest hole and left the scene shortly after.

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.

The chain of events transpired so quickly and I was completely taken by surprise that I did not even react fast enough to take some pictures of the event. So, here it is, a picture shot by Mr. Kesavamurthy who observed the whole drama through his camera. However, this was the highlight of the morning drive into the forest, even more interesting than a mere sighting of the tiger!!

Posted by S.Karthikeyan, Chief Naturalist of Jungle Lodges and Resorts in his blog Karthik's Journal .

Some sightings in K Gudi - A photofeature

Radhish Kurup from Bangalore shares this photofeature on his sightings in K Gudi . For more pictures,please visit here


A gaur looks at us


The jungle is filled with spotted deer


The monkeys are always a sport


A red wattled lap wing poses

Safari in Bandipur

Weekends is more of trips and photowalks these days. Excitement was high since it was my 1st trip to Bandipur and also my 1st visit to a National park. Haven’t travelled much all these years in my life. Lately, I am getting lots of opportunities to travel, credit goes to my friends. This time 4 of us planned to go on trip on 1 of the weekends and also to celebrate 1 of friends birthday. We started at 5am on a sunday morning and headed towards Bandipur and we had booked the rooms in Jungle lodges, Bandipur Stopped for breakfast at Kamath on the way and then started our journey again. We reached the lodge at around 1040am and few of us were bit disappointed since we had thought the lodge will be somewhere inside the jungle but it was on main road and also before the boundary of Bandipur starts. Since there was time for the checkin, we decided to go on a ride till Madhmalai and come back during checkin time. We felt bad to see less grenery around and it was sunny as well. We were enjoying the nature. We saw few monkeys on the way which were running around and jumping. We crossed Karnataka border and reached Madhmulai. We didn’t go for safari there since we had already made plans in Bandipur. We spent little time there and could found few birds and clicked few monkey pics.


People there were kinda forcing us to go on safari and it will be good etc. We escaped somehow by telling we will be coming back tomorrow for the same.

We headed back to Bandipura from there. On the way we found beautiful Indian Roller on a tree. After checkin we went to our rooms and liked the place since it was full of greenery and rooms were very spacious. Plan was that we will have lunch and then rest for sometime and leave for safari at 4 PM. We got the place at the back of the jeep and were excited to get a glimpse of animals and birds. We found many deers on the way.

Journey inside the jungle was one of the most exciting experiences of my life. We were searching for the animals around and found a peacock inside the bushes. Every time we found something, my heart used to jump with joy. We crossed the main road and entered another part of the forest and jeep stopped and then we found elephant at a distance, it heard the noise of the jeep and went inside the bushes. We waited there for sometime but couldn’t see it again. With little disappointment we moved forward and fortunately we could find a herd of elephants eating grass, and plants. There was 1 cute little one with parents and they turned their back towards us, not letting us click their pics. After taking few pics, we moved forward and stopped the jeep. One of the parents which observed us for long time became furious and started chasing the jeep to scare us.

Our heart beat was raising. Jeep driver didnt start the jeep, elephant came very close to our jeep and we started clicking the pics since it was very close. Finally, we moved ahead with happiness of getting close glimpse of elephant and also with the scariest memory.

The scenic beauty, cool breeze made us enjoy the ride. We found a Common Hoopoe, a beautiful bird. It was bit difficult to find this bird in Bangalore but we could find a lot of Hoopoe’s in the forest and many more birds like Bushchat, Myna, Bulbul, Lapwing, white throated kingfisher etc.

Our eyes were searching for the glimpse of tigers or leopards but we couldn’t find one. We found a sambhar deer with huge horns after long time since our meetup with Elephants. Sambhar deer started running far away after seeing us. There were few other groups for the safari. It was bit irritating to see few foreigners shouting inside the forest and giggling loudly.

After moving forward, we found many Sambhar deers. One of them was continously posing till we left the place. Watching the Sun go down inside the forest was a good experience. Peacocks were found at many places. The evening safari came to an end and though we were bit tired but wanted to spend more time in forest. Though the next days plan according to the Naturalist of Jungle lodge was that we will be going for a walk/ trekking we decided that we should go for 1 more safari since this one was exciting.

We informed that we are interested for the safari next day and we were told that there will be wild life movie played before the dinner. The movie was mainly about tigers. It was very disheartening to see how tigers were killed. There was a message from the movie that we should protect tigers and for that all of us should contribute by avoiding poaching of tigers, making small groups of wild life enthusiasts to spread the message, not just enjoying the safari and troubling the animals and their habitats. Our politicians should come forward to help in conserving wild life and to avoid the intrusion of people and mining etc should be avoided. Movie ended with an awesome message :

The tiger perishes without the forest, and the forest perishes without its tigers.

If we cannot save our national animal, what else can we save?

Though we didn’t find a tiger, watching the movie about tiger was very helpful.

Check the website : http://www.truthabouttigers.org/home/ and watch the movie here

After such a inspiring movie, we headed to dining hall for the dinner. Loved the food there. There was camp fire put near the dining hall and we 4 of us had a chat till it was 11:30, though I was more of a listener as always, I enjoyed the conversation.

We had a plan to surprise our friend by celebrating his birthday so went back to rooms and celebrated the birthday and had good time. We had to go to bed since we should be ready by 545 am next morning for the safari. All excited by the previous days safari, we got ready and had a cup of tea before heading for the safari, we wanted to catch the back place of the jeep to enjoy more so we went early.

We were glad we chose the early morning safari during the jeep ride by seeing mist all around. It had enhanced the beauty of the Bandipur.

Though the journey was awesome, we were thinking if we are going to find a tiger/leopard, then we could find pub marks which we followed but we missed it somewhere in between and couldn’t find the leopard. There were small water bodies but no animals around. It was more foggy inside the forest and it was so soothing and enjoyable experience. We moved forward and there they were the most beautiful creature on the earth, peacocks, walking on the roads, few sitting on tree branches.

Looked like they were enjoying the foggy early morning walk. The funny and crazy creatures monkeys were seen on top of many trees doing their usual kothi cheste. As we moved forward, we found a mongoose searching something on the ground. It was roaming around and ran into the bushes hearing the jeep sound. We were enjoying the fog as there were droplets of water on eyelids as well. Never had we experienced this amount of fog. The peacocks were found again, the beauty and the amazing colors and patterns all over the body makes us wonder if there can be any other beautiful creation like this.

Found a Crested serpent eagle on a huge tree enjoying its solitude. We stopped jeep to click the pics and it was there posing for our camera for long time and then flew away and sat on a nearby tree which helped us get a good glimpse.

We reached the end of our safari and found a lot of deers with cute little ones with the parents. With a bit of disappointment of not finding tigers, we headed back towards the lodge and the jeep got punctured just few meters away from the lodge. We got down and waited for driver to do his work and found brahminy starling and few birds around.

It was an amazing experience of traveling inside the forest. The stay and the food at the Jungle lodges was good as well. This place is worth the visit. Hope the number of tiger increases in near future and such beautiful creatures are present for further generations as well.

Posted by software engineer,photographer and traveller , Prathima from Bangalore. You can read her blog here and view her flickr pictures here

A weekend in Bheemeshwari

Last weekend we decided to go out of Bangalore and relax in a place which is not too far away. Bangalore is surrounded by greenery, forests and rocky hills and we decided on Bheemeshwari which lies on the bank of Cauvery, just 103 kms from the IT capital. The Cauvery Wild life Sanctuary covers these areas. The Jungle Lodges and Resorts – JLR, A Government of Karnataka Undertaking, which specializes in Eco Tourism manages three properties on the same Cauvery stretch -Galibore and Doddamakali.

We had booked for a day visit and my experience in Bheemeshwari with JLR was excellent and it was affordable. The officers and even forest guards are very co-operative and food was very good.


We left city by 7am and reached by 10.30Am. It was a great weather with cool breeze ans a bit of a drizzle. The villages , people, landscapes were very beautiful to see
After reaching JLR , we were welcomed by lemon juice and given an orientation of the day's activities.

We started with a trek in a near by hill in the forest with a forest guard. The range is called Basavana Betta. In that lush greenery, one could spot Elephants, Leopard, the endangered Malabar giant squirrel, Deer, Sambar, Peacocks and several birds and animals.

The forest guard Mutthaiah was very kind in explaining about the forests . By this time we had entered the forest , the guard has stopped us upon hearing some sound in the nearby bush and alerted us and took on another route to hill. It was a tough climb up for us as we reached the top. From there , we first saw the animals that were there in the bush .There was an elephant herd and we could see about three elephants. If our forest guard was not alert, we would have had to face them.


From the top of watch tower we could see the panoramic view of Cauvery Wild Sanctuary and mighty river Cauvery ,which flowed in the center of the forest. After spending some time we returned to JLR. We had planned to go to the river till lunch time, but the forest guard told us that the elephants may head to the river .


On the banks of river there were very beautiful log huts which were spacious and seemed affordable.If you didnt have any activities just relax on these hammocks , listening to the song of river and birds.


We headed towards Golghar for lunch and walked beside the river to reach our dining hall. The smell of delicious food flooded the entire landscape as we did appreciate the fact that JLR provided us with such food in a forest, which is the difference between a government and a private resort. Our hats to the people behind JLR.


Later the forest guard told us it was very dangerous to go to the river as crocodiles were there in river. We saw them sleeping lazily on the rock far away as we went on a coracle ride. We sat on one of the small rocks on the banks and watched some birds fishing. The cormorants were too fast for me to capture them on the lens, while the cool breeze was very soothing.

Finally it was time to leave as we had some hot tea and bajji and returned to the city, rejuvenated.


Getting there:

Total Distance from Bangalore to Bheemeshwari 103 Kms
Bangalore to Kanakapura 55 Kms ==> Kanakapura to Sathnur 25 Kms ==> Sathnur to Muthathi village 18 Kms ==> Muthathi Village to Bheemeshwari 5 Kms

Posted by birding and wildlife enthusiast Ramesh J S in his blog