Wednesday 1 March 2017

BLACK BUCK LODGE WEDS 1 MARCH

We had a lovely, but lonely, meal in the restaurant last night as we're the only residents until another group arrives tomorrow.    Rather than the buffet meal they produce when there are large groups of 'guests' they made us a wonderful coriander and pepper soup as a starter (David hates coriander but he did make an effort to finish his bowl) then  chicken biriani with 3 side dishes and some breads .... chicken in India leaves a lot to be desired (bones and bits included in the food) so I'd rather have had a veggie option .. but the flavour was lovely and they'd made one of the side dishes (potato/bean) more spicy for me!!

Whilst waiting for David to get dressed for breakfast I sat on the terrace and was amazed to see this huge creature walk past ... he looks out of proportion with small head, long legs and heavy body and I would say he is the size of a baby elephant.      I showed the photo to the waiter and was told its a blue bull.       Later in the morning he appeared in the distance so David got a glimpse of him and agreed he was huge.    Having Googled blue bull its supposed to measure around 1.5metres to its shoulder but my horse, Roxy, was taller than that and this bull dwarfed her.   Anyway its a Nilgai or blue bull and is the largest Asian antelope apparently



Ladies do a lot of 'heavy work' in India (including road construction) ... these ladies were on their way to work in the kitchen garden



After breakfast, I left David sorting out a few things on the computer and wandered to the nearest lake to find an Adjutant Stork, a Spoonbill and and an Egret all wading together in the water so I watched them for half an hour till his lordship turned up.



Its lovely having this whole lodge/resort to ourselves at the moment!   We watched a kingfisher land a big catch and struggle to a nearby rock where it proceeded to bash the poor victim on the rock.    I thought it was a fish till I saw the pictures and realised it had caught a frog.     My photos are very blurred unfortunately but David got a few seconds of video which is much clearer.     We don't have a video editing programme here so will add that to the Blog when back in England.

These are the blurred ones.    This is a white breasted kingfisher (not as pretty as the common kingfisher but much bigger - I think the common one would have struggled to cope with a frog meal)










OK ... I seem to have masses of photos of birds taken over the 2 days we've spent here.   I know that black bucks are supposed to be the main attraction but .... the birds are more lively and entertaining (and frustrating to photograph)

Kingfishers - I've photographed 2 varieties

This is the Common Kingfisher (and I think the most beautiful).  Its tiny and its fast so has been a challenge to get these shots bearing in mind I'm a 'happy snapper' with a bridge camera so nothing sophisticated!



This is the White Breasted Kingfisher.    Readers of last year's blog will recall I posted masses of photos of a WB Kingfisher as it landed on the mooring rope of the rice barge we travelled in on the Backwaters of Kerala.   It posed beautifully for ages.   So I won't post too many here


Purple Heron



Little Green Bee Eaters were a frequent visitor to the lakes where they skimmed the water catching bugs to eat.

Snack time!







Yummy dragonfly!




Photo-bombed!





The Indian Robin has lots of attitude ... its very dark and larger than our familiar robins.   Ours have red breasts and the Indian robins have red b*ms

and they're quite happy to show them off ....



The beautiful Purple Sunbirds are tiny (just a couple of inches long) and look plain black till you see them in the sunshine when their feathers are iridescent.   Truly stunning to watch but incredibly difficult to photograph as they are very fast movers and tend to hide in the foliage of trees/shrubs.









The Adjutant Stork from this morning





I have scores more photographs of birds ... just too many varieties to post here in one sitting.   So I'll call it a day now before we all lose the will to live..   Maybe when back home I'll work through the remainder and do an additional post (we'll see)!


We have another half day here tomorrow before leaving for the airport around 1pm to fly to Mumbai but we'll just be doing more of the same ... wandering round, watching the world go by and chilling.   Mumbai will be fairly frantic.   The head cold is stopping me from sleeping well so I'm really pleased we have this time to take this easy.




2 comments:

  1. Photos are great Sue, particularly the Bee Eater - I love them. Hope your cold improves soon x

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  2. I love the Adjutant Stork. Looks very bossy! Hope you're feeling better now. xxx

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