Trip to Ragihalli

5th Dec, 2010

My hobby of photography and the recently purchased telephoto lens has inspired me to visit different places for bird photography. This weekend decided to visit Ragihalli. I had gone through few blogs to find out what to expect. Ragihalli is a village somewhere near Bannerghatta and some part of the route to the village goes through the forest area of the Bannerghatta NP.

We (Vinay and me) started at around 6.15 AM and reached at the Ragihalli junction at around 7.30 AM. As soon as we went little further down the road we started spotting birds. The first one was Pied Bushchat. We stopped and approached it slowly but it flew away. Then soon we spotted Red Whiskered Bulbul but that too flew off before we can take its shot. We moved on thinking that we will get lucky later. Soon we spotted Bushchat and this time it did stay still for us to get few shots. Here are the shots

Pied Bushchat (Female)

Pied Bushchat (Male)

 After these first sightings we were not very lucky. After a long drive we spotted a Red Vented Bulbul and Green bee eater and managed to get decent shots.

Red vented Bulbul

Green Bee Eater

Red Whiskered Bulbul

Moving ahead towards Ragihalli we found an open space which presented a lovely view of the forest from top. Till then we did not have very successful birding experience so decided to try hand on few landscapes shots.

Well there are defiantly more birding opportunities that what had got. Another tip to Ragihalli is defiantly on the cards.

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Recent trip to Mumbai

Last week I had been to Mumbai for couple of days. The idea was to meet old friends and relax for couple of days. This time around since I was carrying my camera along I wanted to visit areas like Marinlines, Colaba etc... to capture some candid moments.

We started off at 10 AM from Airoli and took a bus to Vashi station and then a train to CST. Just getting out of the CST station I photographed the station building. We then walked till the Metro cinema, where one of my friend had some work. While he was completing his work I roamed round and took couple of shots here and there.

Metro Theatre

CST

We then got into one of the under bridge near Metro theater. Suddenly I witnessed a rare sight. There was not a single person in the under bridge :) and I had to capture this. Just after I took this shot, crowd came in.

Deserted under bridge


I wanted to spend that entire evening at marine drive gazing at the sea, so we walked and walked and finally saw the sea. The pleasant evening breeze filled us with energy. We spent around 2 1/2 hours chatting, gazing at sea and ofcourse clicking few shots.

	Urban sunset

Sitting here gives you the true feeling of being in Mumbai and then you realize why it is called the city of dreams. Seeing the sun setting behind the tall buildings left me mesmerized. After the sun was down, we headed back to CST station to face the real Mumbai in local trains. By this time sun was down and the sky had taken a lovely dark blue color. The brightly lit buildings looked beautiful against the sky.



We reached home at 11 PM and were totally tired, but as usual its worth getting tired if your entire day was as eventful as this.

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