Paying your dues to Mother Nature
We re-learned a few lessons a Kabini this time
My friend Anuroop Krishnan has a theory. He tells me that you've got to appreciate everything beautiful mother nature throws at you, even if that's not the highest priority on your photography list. The idea is that if you pay your dues that way, mother nature will reward you with the sightings you want. Some months back, I had the opportunity to test out that hypothesis at the Kabini River Lodge.
Well we were quite desperate to find cats at the legendary Kabini range - particularly leopards. Luck hadn't been on our side for all of five drives! To tell you the truth, we'd had pretty bad luck flat out. We missed leopards by the proverbial cat's whisker and to add insult to injury, we didn't find too many birds either. Or for that matter, interesting mammal behaviour. You can imagine, it was a bummer.
So after yet another disappointing safari, my friend Kesava and I were just itching to get some shutter action. So we set out to find what's my favourite set of subjects off the safari track - spiders. We took Revanna - one of the Jungle Lodges guides with us and started looking hard at barks, on the resort walls and under leaves. Here's what happened.
A Huntsman Spider (Olios sp) greeted us right outside our doorstep. Even as we poked our lens at it, the spider curled into a ball, so we left it to its own devices.
It was quite uncanny how we'd completely missed these spiderlings all over the property. These little ones were inside the hollow of a tree. We think they're probably the spiderlings of a comb footed spider (Family Theridiidae).
The same tree revealed a beautiful Lynx spider (Oxyopes genus). The spider was just as fussed by the heat as we were - so we let it hide in the shade as we looked for more specimens.
We had to hold on for a few moments longer though. Our eyes suddenly locked on an amazingly camouflaged, two tailed bark spider (Hersilia sp). It was quite fascinating to see how much biodiversity a single tree can hold!
So, we paid our dues to mother nature. Did Anuroop's hypothesis hold true though? Quite surprisingly it did.
So the next time you have a bad safari, remember there's wildlife everywhere. Probably stuff that'll test your skills far more than a regular drive in the forest. Inspiration is never too far if you follow Karthik's blog. All we need is the willingness to open our eyes and ears just a little bit.