Tuesday, January 17, 2012

Trip to Diksal

     Finally by the second/ third week of January I, after a ton of struggle and procrastination, here is my First blog since the announcement of the start of blogging.
     Well to be frank this is surely my first blog, i mean the first PhotoBlog and shall be covering my first weekend expedition of 2012. This time it was back to my very fav spot and a place, for a change, where i went into a place filled with birds as compared to instance where birds used to bump upon me...
     Well the place is Diskal, basically a waterbody formed by the backwaters of Ujani river. Situated near Bhigwan which lies on the Pune Solapur highway, bout 120-130 kms from Pune, Diksal is a small village which houses the "Bharatpur of Maharashtra". Its a vast shallow water reservior which is also a breeding place and home for several fresh water fishes like the Rohu, Chilepi and Katla and also various form of algae and bacteria. This attracts different varieties of birds and being very remotely situated from population, this becomes a serene for all forms of birds like Varieties of Ibis, Grey Heron, range of storks like the Painted stork, openbilled stork, spoon billed storks, a variety of ducks and last but not the least the auspicious Falmingoes.
     Well this this trip was a grand starter as not only was it my first trip of 2012 but also the first one since I got my DSLR and also the first since I moved into Pune. So, along with my office colleagues including my senior Darshan Sir, my I.D.'s colleague Mehul and another Amatuer photographer, like me, Rahul. We set off early in the morning from Pune and headed towards Hadapsar for the Pune Solapur highway (NH-9). 
     Getting up early in the shiveringly cold morning of Pune is surely the toughest task and somehow we all managed it and headed of by 5a.m. tyring to catch up the early morning Sunrise at Diksal, but hardly did we know that a 130km drive would take more than two and half hours...rather that helped me in catching a priceless capture of the early amber Sun trying to wade off the darkness while we are still travelling on the highway with moderate traffic of basically consisting of heavy and moderate commercial vehicles. Below is the shot that I could capture while in motion in the vehicle
SunRise and the Highway
                            Exif:
S.S.(Shutterspeed) 1/4000 sec  Ap(Aperture) 5
ISO 400 F.L.(Focal Length) 130mm
-2 step Exp Comp






      Finally we reached Bhigwan junction by around 7:45 where few of my ex company colleagues cum best buddies from Baramati were waiting for us and we all joined for some early morning breakfast. Man, if ppl of Pune feel Pune is too cold, they should surely visit Bhigwan. Its was shivering cold even at around 8 in the morning and with all our protection from cold we all were shivering with teeth grinding cold.
     Fianlly we did set off to the spot which is about 3-4 kms fromt the Bhigwan junction and were excited to see glimpses of the mighty Grey herons, Common Coots, River terns and several other birds just before reaching the exact spot. This distracted us and stole around 15 -20 mins when all of us started enjoying clicking pics and basically experimenting with our gear in the early morning and mildly hazy banks of the water body.
Thats Rahul on extreme Left, Darshan Sir with his Nikon and Mehul just enjoying the astonding trailer of what we all shall be witnessing later

     So finally by 8:30 we were off and hopped into the boat of the local Fisherman. Well since I had known this fisherman from my previous visit and also had his contact no I had informed him about our visit and he was there ready to take us thru the serene. 
     This was the first time I had visited this spot early in the year and was both surprised and shocked to check so high water level, either its due to very high rainfall along this region or may be there has been some serious wor on conservation of water. But one thing was clear by the early view...'there wont be many birds'  coz most of the big birds come here when the water level is low as this helps catching the fish easily and also the growth of algae is much faster in shallow water. And so was it...very few huge storks especially no Painted storks. But for a surprise there were huge no. of different Ibis, huge flock of some Ducks and also Cormorants and Sea Gulls. Which was a good thing as I had never seen so many of these species.
     As usual Bharat took us thru the most populated areas of birds, though not too far away from the road, may be coz most of the birds straying too far away would simply fly off as soon as they saw us approaching a bit near them. But capturing the Sea Gulls flying off was really fun and also had one thing in mind...Capture the 'take off' which I have seen in many exhibitions and they look Breath taking. So here are few snaps that were captured.

A Black winged Stilt
Exif:
S.S.: 1/4000sec  Ap.: 5.6
ISO 400  F.L. 250mm
-0.7 step Exp. Comp 30% Crop


Flight of Grey Heron
Exif:
S.S.: 1/4000 sec  Ap: 5.6
ISO 400 F.L. 250mm -0.7 step

Flight of Ibis
Exif:
S.S.: 1/1600sec  Ap.: 14
ISO 400  F.L. 250mm
-1.7 step
A Gull Billed Tern
Exif:
S.S.: 1/320 sec  Ap: 14
ISO 400  F.L.250mm  -0.3 Step
Sea Gull
Exif:
S.S.: 1/800 sec  Ap: 10
ISO 200  F.L. 250mm -0.7step
A Long shot of the Osprey with its catch
Exif:
S.S.: 1/800 sec  Ap: 10
ISO 200  F.L. 250mm -0.7 step
Another form of Sea gull known the Black Headed Gull
Exif:
S.S.: 1/800  Ap: 10
ISO 200  F.L. 250mm  -0.3 step
A Couple of Black Headed Stilts
Exif:
S.S.: 1/2000sec  Ap:  8
ISO 400  F.L. 250mm  -0.7step
Grey Heron
Exif:
S.S.: 1/640  Ap: 10
ISO 200  F.L. 250mm -0.3 step
Bunch of Black Headed gulls
Exif:
S.S.:1/2500sec Ap: 5.6
ISO 200  F.L. 250mm  -0.3step
Grey Heron
Exif:
S.S.: 1/2000sec  Ap: 5.6
ISO 200  F.L. 250mm  -0.3step
Cormorant Pose
Exif:
S.S.: 1/500sec  Ap: 10
ISO 200  F.L.: 250mm -0.3 step
Swamphen
Exif:
S.S.: 1/2000sec  Ap: 5.6
ISO 400  F.L.: 250mm  -0.7step
Openbill stork in centre, poonbill stork and Black Headed Ibis
Exif:
S.S.: 1/500sec   Ap: 10
ISO 200  F.L.: 250mm  -0.3 step
Openbilled stork just landed
Exif:
S.S.: 1/640 sec  Ap: 10
ISO 200   F.L.: 250mm   -0.3step

Cormorant Take off
Exif:
S.S.: 1/500 Ap: 5.6
ISO 200  F.L.: 250mm  -0.7step


Godwits take off
Exif:
S.S.: 1/2000  Ap: 5.6
ISO 200  F.L. 250mm  -0.3step

A series of images of Sea Gull's Take off
Exif:
S.S.: 1/3200  Ap: 5.6
ISO 200  F.L.: 250mm  -0.3step



Openbilled stork Take off
Exif:
S.S.: 1/1600  Ap: 5.6
ISO 200  F.L.: 250mm  -0.7step

Black Headed Ibis's Take off
Exif:
S.S.: 1/2500sec  Ap: 5.6
ISO 200  F.L.: 250 mm  -0.3Step
Thats us with Bharat the Fisherman/Guide post the boating sessions

Well this is the most commonly spotted bird the White Throated Kingfisher
But this is here coz of its ease with humans around it...we almost were less than 10ft away from it still it focussed on catching its prey

Another beauty the Green Bee Eater
Exif:
S.S.: 1/1250  Ap: 5.6
ISO 200  F.L.: 250mm  -0.3 step

Well this beauty was just hands away from me while it was busy catching some insect and then went and sat on this branch hardly 6ft away from me
Exif:
S.S.: 1/400  Ap: 5.6
ISO 200  F.L.: 250mm  -0.3step

And finally spotted this beauty, what was astounding was the fact that once the snake spot us it simple went back in reverse manner without making any major movements as if a stick was pulled from inside those dried bushes
     So finally by 11 we were back from the boat trip and were still wanted to explore the neighbouring areas but unfortunately due to lack of space for parking the vehicles and roaming around for another hour or so for finding a good spot we returned back to Bhigwan for a delicious and spicy Non Veg Lunch at a restaurant specially recommended by my buddy Angad. Unfortunately we were so involved in enjoying the juicy fish curry and hard fried Fish that I/ we could not capture the photographs of the heavy lunch. And so finally we reached back to Pune by around 4p.m. A day well spent or rather a day well invested...Now am awaiting for the Flamingoes to fly in so that I can plan out another trip and capture the Majestic beauties. Now, equiped with 50+ breath taking photographs(well atleast for me) am more than satisfied with the whole expedition. Lets see what comes next. Till then BuBye...
-PJU

P.S.: Please feel free to criticize the above blog as mentioned earlier this is my first and wanna know from the experts how actually it should be and what all should be there and what not... Thanks in advance :)