An outing with birds!

A weekend gone wrong finally turned out not so wrong, in fact turned out quite right! We had a holiday on May 1 (Labour Day). It was a Thursday. So we’d decided to take Friday off to give us a 4-day weekend. All was planned. We were to go on a camping trip to a place near Shimoga. All of us were quite excited. On Wednesday evening, hubby darling announces that trip needs to be cancelled, ‘coz he has some very urgent work on Friday. I was totally dismayed and disappointed. So were the others (4 of our friends were joining us on this). I was also quite angry though I knew it wasn’t really his fault. Well, guess things like this do happen. It’s just awful when you’ve been looking forward to something and it doesn’t work out. So on Thursday I just got wasted…went out, did a long pending three hour book browsing and buying. It felt great. Then to feel even better, we went out for dinner and generally had a good time. Friday, to the surprise of my colleagues, I landed in office!! Anyway Saturday dawned…and hubby darling suggested we go to Mysore. We’d been thinking about doing some bird photography at some lakes in Mysore. This, we’d been promising ourselves from the time we’d got ourselves a new 70 – 300 lens for our camera. So armed with all the gear, we went to Mysore. Our first jaunt was Kukkarahalli kere (kere = lake ).

A shrike

The long tailed shrike is the first bird I’ve spotted, captured (on my D40) and made an id. It’s not a good shot, I know. Clearly it leaves a lot to be desired. But I also lack the right lens for it at this point. Nevertheless, I’m posting it here purely ‘coz I’m happy I atleast got this and think I’ve made the id correctly (hopefully!). 

(Spotted near Ooty)

Update: So my friend who’s into wildlife conservation, told me this bird may not be a long tailed shrike, but rather is a bay-backed shrike. Okkayyy!! See it here.