ICRISAT has long been the holy grail of birders in the city. The varied and undisturbed environs encompassing agricultural, wetland, woodland areas play host to a variety of resident and migratory species. On an especially lucky day, it was told that, we can get to snaps of over 110 species.

I have recently become member of BSAP mailing list and received an alert about birding event at ICRISAT. I have invited Aniketh (my younger one) for the event, as he has now adopted Photography as the hobby as part of his school curriculum and I have noticed that he has been clicking good pics and was told that he does better than his Dad. He was ready to wake up at 5:30AM, despite that it’s a Sunday.   My long time college buddy and avid birder, Venkat Rao, also pledged to join the event.

We drove to ICRISAT and reached the place at 7:30AM.  Birders of different gender, age, and nation were already to board the ICRISAT bus (as private vehicles were not allowed inside the campus).   We were dropped at multiple areas with water bodies, and given time to explore the serene surrounding, and take snaps or watch birds via binoculars.  Since the group was big, it wasn’t easy to capture snaps of birds in the rendezvous mode, given the noise/sound and hustle bustle created by the kids and chatter by  non birders.

Here is the short video that I compiled using few glimpses that I caught as I followed Aniketh and Venkat taking snaps of birds of ICRISAT.  Most of the snaps were taken by Aniketh, as I wasn’t carrying a long lens for my Canon 6D.

These below pics were shot by Venkat Rao