When sometime during the early teens I had first picked the up the book “Jonathan Livingston Seagull” I remember having done so because of the very lovely photos of the Seagulls. Of Course! after having read the book it came to mean much more but there did remain one wish for a long long time. Continue reading Jonathan Livingston Tern
Today, after lunch, myself and Swati decided to explore the neighborhood of the new place. As I have written earlier it is surrounded by rich birding ground.
After walking about 500m we were already seeing birds like Yellow wattled lapwing, Red winged Bush lark, Black breasted finch lark, Rain quail….
Well it is their habitat and while other bird watchers have to trek long to see these we realize that we are fortunate – then it happened once again!!
Coming over the horizon I spotted a huge bird flying towards us, Once again I gasped “Vulture” and Swati said “Can’t be …”
But as it soared above us there was no doubt it was an Indian long billed vulture! Unfortunately this time I did not have a camera 🙁 but I guess this is not the last time, we are on to something here !
It is a lovely Sunday morning, am sitting outside in the garden – Shiku, the Shikra chick we raised and release, just paid a visit – he has got into this habit of occasionally coming very low and inspecting the front yard. At times he shouts till one of us comes out…
A very young squirrel is hopping around – she better be careful 😉
The construction activity has been slowed down a bit – the current ETA is 120 days more to finish the civil work, however I very much like what has been done so far. Some time last week we saw River Tern as well as a Little Tern fishing over the pond/lake which is our backyard, a common kingfisher came and sat on a window ledge – I really hope that the bird life remains undisturbed there… unfortunately it won’t be for long.
Yesterday night we saw an adaptation of “Night of January the 16” it was an adaptation which I feel even Ayn Rand would be pleased with… and yes the verdict was “not guilty”
Lastly, I have decided to stop taking any new photographs for atleast next 3 months – the number of good photographs which I have not been able to post process has gone totally out of control…
The little cormorant which we had taken in on Friday could not make it thru the night. sadly we could not even find out what was wrong with it.
After 5 years of battling, mother nature has still not been convinced that my lifestyle and diet do not warrant a haywire lipid profile… on top of that I have been heaped with a very high blood Homocysteine levels. So I along with my doctor and friend have decided to take the fight to the next level. I have been put on medications which are most likely to last for a long long time.
SANIsoft has had two sequential years of very good business – going by the trend of past years the next year we are likely to see a dip… was brainstorming with Swati as to how to discount for that and how the cash flow should be managed.
I now have enough pictures to put out my own book however I now also have offers for putting my pictures as a co-author in two other books one to be published from Canada and Other from Italy – been wondering if I do need want a book all by myself….
Looks like time has come to really consider a huge bird hospital kind of cage. It has not yet been a complete week and there is an adult Little Cormorant recuperating in the front yard. It was found flapping weakly near our main gate as we returned from the gym in the morning. I really can’t find anything wrong with it except that he felt very hot – have cooled him with a little shower and he now looks much better. Hopefully we can release him by evening. We are hopelessly ill equipped to keep a water bird…..
The most satisfying moment for the week past was when we set free the Shikra chick which we had been looking after for past several weeks. I am happy that we could manage to teach it how to kill and then how to hunt, yes they have the instinct but it needs to be honed. Swati has a detailed diary of the care taking it needed and there are also a few pictures. the poor thing was mortally scared of the camera so we did not click much.
On work front we have now have a programmer whose full time responsibility would be “Open source development and management”. Apart from working on Coppermine NG, she essentially will see to it that the other programmers are kept busy with Open Source work when they are not involved in commercial work. Earlier one of the senior programmer would do this job when they were free but since past couple of months they have been too busy with commercial development to look into it.
With Aasim’s summer vacation still continuing I have not got enough time on his computer to post process the pictures from the May end trip…
The plan started from here A BIG thanks to the very helpful and sweet who made it happen.
The original plan was that we will take an early morning local train from Thane to reach Dadar at around 7am and from there Ashwini would take us to Sewri. However one of Swati’s friend somehow got enthused enough to wake up at 5:30 am on a Sunday and wanted to accompany us, plus was willing to drive us to Dadar. This was indeed creditable on his part as this was his very first birding trip and his usual Sunday waking up time is somewhere around late afternoon.
A fast drive and we reach Dadar station a bit early. We made good use of the time drinking cut chai from the roadside thela. From Dadar station Ashwini skillfully drove us to the observation point on the jetty where the first thing I noticed was a fairly muscular man doing push-ups right in the middle!
It took a while for the fact to sink in that the complete place was swarming with Flamingos. At the same time I also noticed what I had been warned about – the light! We were in the west and all the birds were either back lit or short lit. Photographing them was not going to be too rewarding…
However since we did not have time enough to be there in the evening this was the best we could have.
NO! we were not disappointed at all. After a few shots from the jetty Shishir took the initiative and talked to the pehelwan on the boat which was docked there. Soon we trooped on to the deck with our equipment. The birds were very close from that vantage point. Next two hours were spent in haven!
There are several more pictures of the Sand Plover and Curlew Sandpiper which I will upload as soon as I get some more time…. for now take a look at some of the flamingo pictures HERE
If you are into birdwatching then pick up your favorite field guide and look up the distribution map for Red-necked Phalarope, then hop over here to see some pictures of the same that I clicked yesterday at Wena Lake, Nagpur.
We also saw some Little Terns nesting – once again this is the first record for Little Terns nesting at Nagpur. Though Nagpur is waaaay inland for these birds I would like to now call them Summer Breeding Migrants
The week just zoomed past….
Throughout the week we were sifting through resumes, We are currently running at full capacity and it is always a bad idea to do this for long – there has to be some redundancy. Yes, project overlapping is there but I want to have at least 30% spare man hours. Besides this we are also working on ways for faster project transfer than what is currently in place, this just means further standardization of coding practices and more extensive Unit Tests for the Models. Also spare hours means that the programmers contribute more to Open Projects. I am very pleased with how Koppermine – The KDE client for Coppermine Picture Gallery is turning out.
Swati and Aasim hopped over to Delhi for the weekend, Aasim wanted to hook-up with Kabir and Swati was meeting some of her old old friends.
Yesterday I indulged myself with a day full of bird watching along with a few more birder friends. First we visited this amazing place right in the heart of the city which we recently discovered. It has a huge heronery of Black Crown Night Herons and Cormorants with 100+ nest. Noticed a very interesting thing, the chicks of Black Crown Night Herons are out of the nest even before they can fly and scamper around on the branches begging from any adult which cares to feed. Some of them even manage to get down to the ground and forage!!
We then proceeded to the nearby Wena Lake where the wader breeding is in full swing. Got a ‘photo lifer’ – Oriental Praticole! it is a very beautiful and relatively unafraid bird. Oh! by the way – I use the word photo-lifer to describe a bird which I have captured on camera for the first time. Another interesting image captured was of a Club Tail dragonfly eating another dragonfly.
Last week also saw the commencement of the first Nagpur-Bangkok flight which will be a great time saver for us, wasting nearly 2 days at Mumbai was a pain. Also, it looks like the Nagpur Flying Club will soon start, if not that then the Gondia Flying School will definitely start – I intend to get my Private Pilot License as soon as they start.
Swati: Who are giving Valentine gifts to?
Aasim: No one!
Swati: Why?
Aasim: S******i has gone mad…. she was always mad now she has gone worse
Swati: So why not An****a?
Aasim: sigh…
Me: She is just too good… better than him 
Swati: Is that true?
Aasim nods in assent
Swati: Then it is great, you always must pick girlfriends (partners/wives/spouses implied) who are better than you!
Me and Aasim – Speechless
Sometimes I really wonder what kind of mess we are making with that kid’s mind.
And now for the weekly summary – Aasim was not well for most of the week due to a viral infection but is now better, once again we did not have to resort to any antibiotics (read his immune system resisted secondary bacterial infections well) and am happy about it.
Yesterday I went birding with some friends to Wena Lake. Swati stayed back with Aasim, got my first pictures of Kentish Plover and Small Pratincole and we counted an approximate of 15000 ducks mostly Red-crested Pochards. There is also news of Bar-headed Geese at a nearby lake will have to go and get some pictures. An idea for publishing “Out of distribution” paper was brought up – I already have records of at least 8 such birds with pictures but the question is who will write… these days I can’t seem to write anything more than half a page on any subject.