The Spotted Owlets of Bharatpur

As I walked leisurely on the trails across the park, I noticed a few spots where you can invariably find the spotted owlets roosting through the most part of the day. They're mostly seen in small groups of 3-4 owlets sleeping cosily until they're disturbed by some noise. They usually prefer to sit in places where they're not easily noticed but if you're lucky, you could get them without distracting backgrounds. Over the three days I made sure I visited these locations repeatedly to check if there was a better opportunity to photograph these cute little birds.

This little one was one of the three owlets who were sitting together until they were disturbed by the noisy onlookers and decided to split. The light was dull and I had to overexpose by 2/3 stop to get details on the bird without blowing out the highlights.

Tech Specs:

Canon 1D Mark IV + Canon 600mm F4 L IS with 1.4x TC
Shot at 840mm, 1/400s, F5.6 and ISO 400

An Encounter With The Jungle Cat

As I stopped by a spot to look for some bar headed geese who were camping at a distance from the shoreline, I could notice that there was a lot of commotion near the bushes under a tree and the jungle babblers had gone awry. That's when I got a glimpse of a jungle cat who was hiding inside and that explained the alarm calls.

I setup my tripod and sat at a distance anticipating the cat to make it's move. A guide who was accompanying some foreign tourists had also seen the cat and wanted to wait there but his clients thought otherwise. So I sat there alone, watching the bushes and was getting the camera adjusted on the tripod when suddenly the cat made an appearance and walked down the trail. I was cursing myself for the missed opportunity since I could have gotten a really good shot of it coming out of the bush. But now all I could do was to follow it in through the bushes and see if I can get another opportunity.

The good thing was that it stopped after a bit and was watching something to hunt, that's when I got that little window of opportunity to make this shot. Again, this wasn't the best setting but I was happy that I could atleast get a record shot after the little mess up.