For day 2 of Birds of Prey week, I decided to downscale from the eagle to a wonderful versatile little raptor that I photographed in India.
Although I had seen one or two Shikra in the northern region of South Africa, I had yet to take even a vaguely decent photograph.
So, as three men in a Gypsy jeep, drove down a dusty road in the Tadoba Andhari Tiger Reserve, in Chandrapur, India, looking for tiger, we had no idea we would see this little chap.
We had just come off photographing a Sloth Bear, which was scratching and foraging around in the undergrowth and I was feeling in a great mood when the driver shouted… tiger. We pulled up to a waterhole and saw, the hindquarters and tail, of a young female tiger disappearing into the thick bamboo. Disheartened, we decided to wait and listen for any distress calls from the local Langurs or Samba deer. It was all dead quiet.
Out the corner of my eye I caught a flutter of wings and spun around to see this beauty perched. It stayed close the main trunk of the tree and looked around for any prey. I grabbed the 500mm, which still had the 1.4x converter on, and got some great photos of this bird.
Sometimes it is a trade-off, you will always miss photos of the larger stuff, but always listen and lookout for the small species, they will fill up your day and your memory cards, before you even realise it,
Kingdom: Animalia
Phylum: Chordata
Class: Aves
Order: Accipitriformes
Family: Accipitridae
Genus: Accipiter
Species: A. badius
