canis: BEAR HAVEN

Atlast I found time to write about my field trips. I was in daroji for a week with my friend arvind rao,a Wildlife Photographer who designs air crafts and Rahul Chavan,a wildlife biologist from United Kingdom. Daroji is 50 kms from bellari, the richest district in Karnataka. It’s the best place in the world to see the sloth bear. I spend a week photographing bears, painted spur fowls, jungle bushquails, francolins and few other birds and mammals. It was a very amazing trip.

Photographing bears in Daroji is tough especially when u go there In summer . We park the vehicle in a particular place were the bears come to feed. The car is used as a hide. We reach the place by 1pm and station the car behind the bushed and cover it. The hot afternoon from 1 pm to 6 pm will exhaust everything in u. the bears come slowly in the evening. The first day was my luckiest day. I am photographing bears for the first time and the excellent light and setting provided by nature is good. I saw two female bears with cubs. We got some shots of cubs playing, resting, feeding etc. I burnt some 14 GB and by the end I ran out of cards. NeXt day I decided to bring the laptop to transfer images while photographing. But after that,the next four days we didn’t have good bear sightings. Daroji is also the best place to photograph Painted spurfowl, a beautiful south Indian endemic bird.

I met my dear friend Harish bhat, researcher from IISc and honorary wildlife warden, banglore. He is an expert in south Indian jungles and he worked extensively over adecade in the forests of Karnataka. I was about to leave to Chennai on 9^th but harish said we will go to Rane benur blackbuck sanctuary and try to photograph wolves n blackbucks. Post poning my trip we left Daroji to Rane benur blackbuck sanctuary, one the home of great Indian bustard.