Photographing at Point Calimere - Dec 2008

Dr. Srinivasan and I went for a photo shoot to Point Calimere. This was our first time there.
Dr. S. Balachandar of BNHS arranged this trip for us. The DFO at Pt. Calimere accommodated us at the Forest Resthouse.

Dr. Balachandar is Assistant director at BNHS. He has been working in the field of Ornithology for the last 40 years and is known to a be world known researcher in this field. His latest project ( funded by various organizations such as WHO and FAO ) is to tag migratory birds with GPS trackers. This is mainly used to track Bar-headed geese and their influence on spread of Avian Flu. The following site has link to the birds that they have currently tagged.( You will need Google earth and the files from this ftp site to see the movement of birds on a daily basis. ftp://ftpext.usgs.gov/pub/wr/ca/dixson). About 72 Birds in the Chilka Lake, Orissa and Kundhakulam, Tamil Nadu. According to Balachandar this has been one of the most successful tagging sites in the world.
Impressed by the work that this team does, the ornithologist who had come US gave them all the equipment they needed without hesitation.

He and his team (Selvam, Mani, Kurpakaran, Gurusamy and other ) is doing a wonderful work in the field. I wish we had more people like him help educate and conserve our ecology and envirnoment.

We spent 4 days at Pt. Calimere. ( Dec 25th to Dec 28th ). Gurusamy cooked some simple but amazing food.

Day 1. Drive from Chennai to Pt. Calimere. Started at 5:30 am and reached around 4 PM.
We had many stops on the way to shoot pictures. Taught our driver Hari to hwo to spot birds of interest and slow down or stop when needed. That evening we walked around the salt marshes.

Day 2. Early morning walk around the salt marshes. Doc showed me how to take pictures of terns in flight. I am yet to master it. He suggests I start playing video games with my kids. This will probably help in panning and tracking the camera better. We saw who the trap birds for ringing. Metering for a incident light meter seems to be interesting to do. I have to try that some day. Also learnt to shoot in the Manual mode. I have always shoot with the Program mode ( or what Rajiv Menon calls marriage photographers mode ) or the Aperture priority mode.

We meet Dr. Balachandar in the afternoon. He showed us how the ring birds. They had trapped Redshank that day.

In the evening we went into the reserved forest. We saw black bucks. First time seeing them in the wild. Light was perfect. Some of the pictures we took were better that taking with a CP filter.

Day 3. Balachandar took by boat to see more sea shore and migratory birds. First time I learnt to identify the various terns. It was difficult to shoot from the boat. Doc got some nice hand held shoots using the 80-200 ( no VR ) . Hmm!! need to learn a lot more. Took a few good shoots of terns. ( Great Crested, Lesser Crested, Sandwich )

Evening we went back to the reserved forest to shoot small birds and more black buck. Today we parked the car and walked until sunset.

Day 4: We left early. We went to the temple at Vedaranniyam on the way. We also stopped for a hour shooting Brahminy Kites, Kingfisher ( white throat and pied )and parakeets.

I thought we could see flamingos in large flocks. But looks this the storm a few weeks before destroyed quite a bit of their habitat.

I will definitely go there many more times. I have to definitely take Keshav. He wanted to come along so badly. He really thought we will photo a new species of bird and he will miss being there.

Such places are India's last treasures. I only hope people like Balachander continue to exist for generations to come and help preserve places like this for years to come.