Eagle Eye (Grey-headed Fish Eagle adult and juvenile) Photographed by Dipayan Chakraborty
Photograph Description: Safaris in South Indian jungles can be equal parts frustrating & exhilarating. Long stretches go by with not even a crow in sight and suddenly you see a 30 strong herd of elephants! This evening started off as the frustrating variety. We were on a boat safari in the Bhadra reservoir in beautiful golden light with not a critter in sight except a few cormorants. After a while, a Brahminy Kite is espied and some excitement gets stirred up in the group. We got closer to the bird and got set to start shooting, when all of a sudden someone said there are two more raptors on the ground. The evening was about to get exhilarating!
There were two raptors of markedly different plumages devouring a fish. One was clearly an adult Grey-headed Fish Eagle. The other was not id-ed immediately. Some folks thought it to be a Crested Serpent Eagle, but that notion was quickly disabused. Shreeram stepped in and identified it as a juvenile Grey-headed Fish Eagle. The raptors continued to eat the fish about 30 m away from us at ground level, and the Nikons and Canons were all merrily firing away. The birds gave us a good sighting for about 20 minutes making our entire trip worthwhile!
Photographer’s Perspective:
This was one of my best wildlife moments ever, with so many elements coming together at once.
Each of these events is a low probability event in itself, and all of them coming true at once, just does not happen everyday.
Technical Details: Focal Length 200mm | f/8 | 1/2500sec | ISO 400 The photographer used AF-C (Continuous focus mode) with single-point focus (centre point) to keep the focus on the bird as the boat was in motion. Continuous shooting (or burst mode) was used to capture as many moments of this rare sighting as possible.
Dipayan Chakraborty made this image during Darter’s Wildlife Photography Workshop at Bhadra in April 2014.