‘What do we shoot?’ Anitha asked me covering the camera with a hand towel; I didn’t have any idea either! ‘Well, I don’t know’ I replied. ‘And where are we going? Are we going to Hesaraghatta lake?’, she asked. Hesaraghatta lake is just about 12 KMs from my place, and is our frequent getaway anytime. I love driving in the rain, and she knows it. ‘Ah... why don’t we go around our Layout and check out what we can find ... and I think wet birds should be our agenda today ’. I had thought that the rain, when it stopped (if it stopped) would bring out birds to feed on the insects and worms. Our Layout is quite sparsely populated and has a good amount of trees and plants which are fast disappearing. We have identified some spots and trees where it is good to spend some time with our camera in our Layout. Anitha asked me to drive to one of those places where we always find something interesting for our camera.
Just as I took a turn not far from my house Anitha cried ‘Kingfisher!’ I stopped the car and saw a White-throated Kingfisher on an electric wire soaking itself in the rain. The bird immediately flew towards an Eucalyptus tree nearby. Anitha made me drive in the reverse as she clicked away at the drenched beauty.
Tired after driving the car in the Layout roads in search of the elusive birds we drove towards Chikkabanavara Lake (after photographing a wet Myna and a Robin, I think, not very good photos to be posted), which is smaller than H’ghatta lake but closer to my house. Anitha wanted to take some photos of wet Parrots and we headed for our parrot spot. But we decided not to stop there beside the lake as we had suddenly decided to explore new places! We took a small road not explored before and moved on as we spotted an egret feeding in the paddy fields. It gave us a nice shot as it shook to remove water from its feathers.
Next, we moved ahead as we found a huge tree and we heard the typical sharp parrot sounds. Anitha, excited, immediately got out of the car and walked towards the tree as the rain had calmed down into a drizzle. The path was all water laden and the grass was all slippery. Seeing us, the parakeets flew away onto a few adjacent huge trees. We followed them and landed on a Hindu Rudrabhoomi (cemetery)! Despite my encouragement Anitha didn’t want to go into the cemetery, especially when there were not many people around and while it was cold and drizzling! We parked the car on the road and looked into the trees. We were lucky as a couple of Rose-ringed parakeets came and sat on a branch quite close to us. And the camera went rolling again!
We spent some more time roaming around and clicking at whatever we found to be interesting, and I think we got some good shots too. Though the agenda for the day was ‘wet birds’, we got some good shots of some wet flowers and rain drops and yeah, even a dripping grass hopper as well!.
Overall it was three hours of Independence Day well spent at learning and understanding about the rains, birds, photography and ... of course each other!
