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!
It was right about this time that the sun started to beat down on us quite badly. So we walked towards slightly shady areas of the lodge. Just as we reached the dining area, a long jawed spider (Tetragnatha sp), greeted us.
As we walked by the backwaters, our eyes chanced upon an ornate tree trunk spider (Herennia sp) that had fallen off the tree. It seemed to have lost a leg in a past struggle. We hardly got a few shots before it got up a tree again.
Given how two tailed spiders perch themselves, it's not always easy to get a shot of their eyes. Spiders' eyes though are the things that have always drawn me to these creatures. So when I saw another of the Hersilia species, I couldn't resist the temptation of trying an eye-to-eye shot of the individual.
It helps to not be single minded in your search. Had Kesava not found this beautiful set of wasp eggs on our spider hunt, we'd have missed those moments admiring their engineering.
A nearby wall turned out to be a rather rich habitat for spiders - some more cooperative than others. This "Daddy Long Legs", Cellar Spider (Pholus sp) reminded me of the ones I have at home.
Nearby, a jumping spider (Plexippus sp.) stared right into the camera.
If only to break the momentum of finding jumping spiders, a crab spider appeared almost out of nowhere. We literally bumped into its web and broke it by mistake. While it clung to a leaf, we made a few images before leaving it in a covered place to rebuild.
The Salticidae family, a.k.a Jumping spiders were surely the stars of the day. We found several different species including this one. I'm still to identify the genus of this specimen.
And while we saw several spiders between then and lunch, the highlight of our walk around the campus was this elegant golden jumper (Chrysilla sp.) It's metallic coloration made for a perfect end to what was an enthralling nature walk around the lodge. Far more exciting than any of the safaris we'd been on till then and heaps more challenging from a photography perspective. My poor macro skills will tell you that already.
So, we paid our dues to mother nature. Did Anuroop's hypothesis hold true though? Quite surprisingly it did.
We saw this rather bold male leopard on our next safari!
That safari in fact exceeded our expectations as we also found the famous Maastigudi male tiger. The shots weren't much to write home about, but it sure was a story to tell.
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.
