Weekend visit to Pocharam and Narsapur

Recently, with the Independence day weekend around the corner, 4 of us (Ashok, Sasi, Rohit, and myself) drove down to Pocharam for a spot of birding and to generally enjoy getting out.

The drive to Pocharam is about 2.5 hours. You exit Hyderabad through Bala Nagar and the small towns you will touch on the way are Jeedimetla, Narsapur and Medak. Its a very decent 1-day getaway if you leave around 5 AM in the morning. The roads are actually very good all the way up to the Pocharam Wildlife Sanctuary, part of the Pocharam Dam.

You can find the map with the driving directions here.

We did manage to a fair bit of birding. For me the personal highlight was catching the Scaly Breasted Munia and Indian Silverbill for the first time on my camera. We also happened on some really dramatic landscape along the road and also in Pocharam due to the very heavy cloud cover that day. All pics from this trip below:



Here is the list of birds ID'd that day:
Scaly Breasted Munia
Indian Silverbill
Grey Heron
Painted Stork
Ashy Crowned Sparrow Lark (M/F)
Green Bea Eater
Brahminy Kite
Black Kite
Cattle Egret
Large Egret
Median Egret
Baya Weaver
Purple Rumped Sunbird
Indian Roller
Spotted Dove
White-throated Kingsifher
Drongo
Cotton Teal
Lesser Whistling Teal
Short toed snake Eagle
White Bellied Drongo
Shikra
Pied Robin (juv)
Common Sandpiper
Paddyfield Pippit
Red wattled Lapwing
River Tern
Ashy Prinia

Cheers!

Armed with a Canon 500mm prime - Lotus Pond

This post has been due for a long time now. I had taken the pictures below as early as May 2010, but never got around to posting them. Was just checking my old pics and suddenly remembered that these have been due. This particular set of pics are really special to me as this was the first time I got to use a 500mm prime with a 1.4x converter on my 7D (Huge thanks to Ashok again!!).

Watch out specifically for the Tickell's Blue flycatcher and the Small blue KF, my first decent catch of both these :)



Cheers

Around the world (almost!) with the 10-20 Sigma . . .

I am aiming to make this photo blog update of mine slightly different. In recent times I have been focusing mainly on birdlife and other wildlife as subjects on most on my posts. This time around I am trying to focus mainly on architecture with a few pictures thrown in as landscapes and cityscapes.

I had recently purchased a Sigma 10-20 wide angle lens and the opportunity to try it out extensively came by when I traveled on work first to the US and then to Ireland. The pictures I have posted below have been mainly shot in the cities of Mountain View, US; Seattle, US; Half Moon Bay, US; and Dublin, Ireland.

Do check the pictures out below and post any comments/feedback that you would like to share.