Monsoon birding with a Small Blue Kingfisher

It is monsoon time in India and though wildlife photography during rains can be quite exciting, it does come with its own set of unique challenges like low and soft light, getting the shutter speeds, ensuring that one's photo gear is protected and so on and so forth.

During one of our monsoon birding in India trips @ the Hebbal lake, on the outskirts of Bangalore, we got a wonderful opportunity to observe and photograph the Small Blue Kingfisher doing what it does best - fishing. It was raining and we knew that the low and soft light conditions was going to make photography very challenging. So we used a tripod to offset the problem to some extent.

It was an overcast morning and watching the Small Kingfisher make successful fishing dives was quite a birding experience. It was incredible to see it come up with fish on almost every dive. The low light conditions did not permit shutter speed more than 1/250s ensuring that we could not freeze the little fella in flight.

Here are a collection of images from that birding trip.

Check out this earlier post on Kingfishers, which shows some of the different Kingfisher species found in India.

Birding in India - Peacock Courtship Dance

The national bird of India - The Peacock is a large vibrant, blue colored bird with a distinct crest and an ornate tail train. The tail train is formed by 100+ upper tail-coverts. During the breeding season, normally in summer, the Peacock uses its tail train in an elaborate courtship display and the ensuing unique dance not only attracts the Peahen, but is also a visual treat for photographers and bird watchers alike.

We have been fortunate to observe a couple of Peacocks during their courtship dance and surely enough it has been quite a spectacular experience that provides many lovely photo opportunities.

Here's a collection of images from one such recent sighting; you can see the exquisite train of this majestic bird in the first image, which it skillfully uses in its courtship dance portrayed in the rest of the images.

All images have been taken with the D300, 300mm F2.8 mounted with the 2x TC.