I admit that I didn’t travel halfway around the world to take pictures of birds. Kansas is fairly short on tigers in the wild, but we have birds in abundance.
However, what began as a series of photos taken mostly to fill down time between other sights became a genuine fascination. It was impossible to not be affected by the simple beauty of the parks’ many avian residents. As a result, several of my portfolio pieces turned out to be bird photos.
Maybe I should give the birds back home a fairer opportunity, too.
The birds were hard to keep track of as I went. The naturalist and guides were good about telling me what I was looking at, but I wasn’t equally good at writing things down right away. Thus I am greatly indebted to my Aunt Kathy who went through the portfolio photos, figured out what the subjects were, and even sent links to their ebird entries, which include recordings of their songs.
The bird in the photo above is a red-wattled lapwing. The colors reflected in the water are from one of the Bandhavgarh plateaus in the background.
This is a bay-backed shrike.
This is a white-throated kingfisher (I actually did get a note jotted about him).
This is an Indian roller, which was even more beautiful in flight (though the photos weren’t as good).
Serpent eagles were frequent sights in the park. I thought perhaps they got their name from their vaguely snake-like heads. But no, apparently it’s because they eat snakes.
And last but certainly not least, this bittern was enjoying a misty early morning in Kanha.
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