Ranthambhore cleanup - mammals

Probably my last blogpost about India. Here are some images of mammals from Ranthambhore I had no time to process earlier. Ranthambhore is fantastic for mammals. The abundance of deer, wild boar and other types of tiger food explains why there are so many predators there. Driving around the park, you do see many hundreds of deer every day. Commonest species is Spotted Deer:

Sambar is tiger's favourite prey. Their eyesight is poor and they're not very fast runners like Spotted Deer. They often are seen wading in lakes.

Nilgai is an impressive beast, reminded me of the African Eland antelope

Wild Boar

Black-faced Langurs are very common in the park

They often adopt the contemplative posture

Not easy to photograph with their extremely long tail and a 500mm...

 Black-tailed Mongoose

Interesting shape to their pupils

Indian Palm Squirrel

And of course there was this mammal too, our main target in India. Arrowhead.

Check this great video by Amir:

Ranthambhore cleanup - birds

As I had limited wifi and time in Ranthambhore, my 'real-time' blogposts from there were rather brief. I did photograph a lot, so here is a collation of some photos taken during the 2.5 days of safari there, mainly of common birds.

Asian Openbill

Grey Francolin - very common

Great Thick-knee. Great indeed

Plum-headed Parakeets came in to drink by the park gate

Black-rumped Flameback

Common Woodshrike

Indian Robin - female. The smart male wouldn't pose

Red-vented Bulbul. Abundant but very neat

Large Grey Babblers doing their thing 

One of many Red-breasted Flycatchers

One of fewer Taiga Flycatchers

Chestnut-shouldered Petronia - huge numbers of them

Half day, half luck

Our last morning in Ranthambhore was alright, though we did not see a tiger. We were VERY close - all deer in the area we worked in were terrified, constantly giving alarm calls and dashing in horror, but we just couldn't locate the tiger family there. We also found fresh Tiger, Leopard and Sloth Bear footprints but didn't see them either.

We had no special birds this morning, but still nice birding. Indian Peafowl is a real trash bird in India. But the males are truly spectacular, especially when displaying.

Indian Scops Owl

Painted Spurfowl - female. Ranthambhore specialty.

Black-winged Kite

Terrified Nilgai

All in all, our Ranthambhore visit was brilliant. Our main target - tiger - was achieved with great success. Birding was good, and the park is very beautiful. Sushil our guide and driver really did his best to help us enjoy the park. In this section of the trip we used the services of Wild World India. I cannot recommend more their services, especially for keen birders and naturalists. From inquiries through booking, logistics and the time in the park itself, the service was professional, efficient and friendly.

Now we're in Delhi after a long train ride. Tomorrow we're off to Kaziranga in Assam. Stay tuned!

Tiger, yawn

You may ask yourself why am I awake at 05:00 updating the blog. Our hotel., The Ranthambhore Bagh, is adjacent to a wedding venue. The f@%&king music is still playing now... Those Indians sure know how to party all night long.  I couldn't sleep all night. Thanks!

Anyway, yesterday was a steady day. The human brain is quite something because we had an amazing encounter with a tiger, but it still felt like a somewhat slower day. Again, we had an unrestricted full-day permit. If you ask me that's the only way to work in Ranthambhore, despite the costs. We failed to find a fresh tiger or anything else of interest. Arrowhead gave the same show as she had the previous day, offering again extreme close-up in bad light mainly. 

Yawn...

If I were a male Tiger I'm sure I'd fall in love with her. She's so beautiful, isn't she?

Nice views when she walked along the lake, in front of Jogi Mahal, the famous Ranthambhore landmark. But my big lens failed to capture the classic scene. Amir did better.

 We added some new birds, and again our daily tally was about 94 species. Some nice stuff.

Stork-billed Kingfisher

River Tern

And some for the birders:

Again, tons of Hume's Warblers and some Greenish Warblers too:

Greenish Warbler

Oriental Honey Buzzard - 2cy (female?)

 We had several White-capped (Chestnut-breasted) Buntings, including this male:

We found one day-roosting Indian Scops Owl, and ended the day nicely with this fine Brown Fish Owl:

Heading out soon for a final half-day safari drive, so wish us luck.

Tiger taster

First day of birding in India today. Great to be back - first time since 2001. We spent a full day in Ranthambore National Park in Rajasthan. It was an amazing day, with sightings of three different tigers. The morning was tough but from noon onwards we had much better results. Arrowhead, a 3 year old female, spent a few hours loafing around one of the lakes. She is really used to humans, and was certainly not scared of vehicles, maybe only slightly angry - when the masses arrived in the afternoon it did get pretty nasty around her. What an amazing animal. I saw one in Corbett in the previous millenium, from a distance, so today's experience was quite something. The majesty, the power, the beauty, uhhhh....Truly breathtaking.

My photos today are mostly extreme close ups.  All these are full frames:

The beauty 

The look... 

The canines...

Arrowhead is scarred, as a result of territorial fights with her mum and sisters. She is just reaching sexual maturity at her age and holds a large territory.

The camouflage...

The park was packed with animals - hunderds of deer (3 species), and the menu included several other types of tiger food.

Birding was not easy today.  First, I am completely rusty - I need another day or two to remember all the regular calls. Second, we were really focused on tigers today and rarely stopped for birds. And third, it is really not easy to bird in Ranthambhore - you must sit in the jeep all the time. But still, after all excuses, we did rather well - check our eBird checklist from today.  There were lots of common resident birds. Quite many Siberian migrants around - literally hundreds of Hume's Warblers, with smaller numbers of Greenish Warblers, also large numbers of Red-breasted Flycatchers and few Taiga Flys, many Tree and few Olive-backed Pipits etc. 

One for Euro-birders - Taiga Flycatcher

We worked with an excellent guide / driver named Sushil Chauhan - strongly recommended. Thanks Sushil!
I have many more images to edit (2 cards...), but this will have to wait for another day. After a full day in the field, and another one tomorrow, I need to catch some sleep. Good night. Tonight I will dream about tigers.