1200 birds of India

Oriental White Eye at Khijdia Bird Sanctuary Gujarat

(CLICK HERE for the entire Photo Gallery)

A decade-and-a-half ago I was a bird enthusiast. It was my passion to identify birds. I even bought a then expensive zoom lens. But, soon I started with trekking and there was nothing else I thought of doing on weekends. When trekking I got the craze of waterfalls and then the waterfalls photography. I enjoyed watching wildlife including birds on the way though. Exclusive birding trips were long forgotten. Binoculars and zoom lens were left deep inside the closet. With the world travel and backpacking India trips I left behind the heavy camera gear and taking bird pictures was a forgotten story. I bought a high end point-and-shoot camera instead. Now, my trekking trips are stopped due to some mysterious illness. Recently, I was lazily browsing nothing in particular and found some articles on birds interesting. I was shocked to know many species of birds in India have found their place in the endangered list. It is very sad to know the very common birds are going uncommon. That info kind of rekindled the passion for birds in me! Thought if I don't see them now then I may not see them anytime later!

Common Myna and Rosy Starlings at Lake Lakhota Jamnagar Gujarat

I looked for birding hot-spots near and around Bangalore. Since its winter I looked for the places where migratory birds congregate. Not that I have a great lens for wildlife and birding. But, Canon 100-400mm L is sufficient for an enthusiast, IMO. I thought of taking pictures of Indian birds when possible and list in my blog. I do not carry a tripod and so all bird pics I take are hand held. They come out definitely soft and high ISO setting on my camera Canon 50D, for the tiny-hiding-behind-the-bush birds, may introduce a lot of noise. Or the pictures could be heavily cropped and so could be laughably soft and grainy. Some might not even have the right exposure, especially the snowy white birds. I will still list them until I get a better picture of the same. My new 'sticky' topic will be- 1200 birds of India. I think the right number is 1,180 according to the survey made in 2004. If there is any recent report the number could be different again. Will share the simple picture gallery on Google-Photos. CLICK HERE to view the gallery. I am planning to post photographs, with names, location and time of the year. Hoping to get the identification right! Please let me know if you have trouble accessing the gallery! Well, you need to have a Google account.

It would be too ambitious to say that I will photograph all 1200 but, I will be proud even to get 120 :) CLICK HERE for the page listing the birds I have photographed so far. I have few unidentified or doubtful about the IDs of birds, may need some expert help for the same. I would appreciate your kind help.
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This post is liked to Wild Bird Wednesday

If you want pictures please ask me :)
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Scrapbook- A Travel Blog by Kusum Sanu is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.