Adventure: the road to revelation.

There is a lovely Scots word, "stravaig", which means to wander without purpose. The natural history writer Robert Macfarlane calls such a wanderer a "Meanderthal". I neither stravaig, not am I a Meanderthal. I love to have a purpose and a destination when I walk. More often than not, I carry a heavy load with which to do things; cameras, tape measures, collecting equipment, binoculars, rifle.

Each walk must be a journey. A successful journey should have an element of discovery. That's what makes it an adventure. Adventures are about discovery. You don't have adventures until you feel the thrill, the wonder of seeing something new or spectacular, something that stands out in your memory, something you talk about and recall with friends.

I have always found that the natural world thrills me more deeply, touches me more profoundly, than anything else. Natural discoveries can be small, happenstance encounters. Last week I watched a raven performing a display flight over the chalk hills near my home. I heard it’s deep croak “prruuk”, and looked up to see it flip over upside down, then roll back again. It dipped and rose again, effortlessly surfing the great green wave of the downland escarpment. Or they can be more dramatic, profound encounters such as the journey I made last year to photograph tigers in Maharashtra’s Tadoba-Andhari National Park.

Raven


Lou and I often go out with the express purpose of a certain discovery: to find otter signs, to see the great bustards on Salisbury Plain or visit some hidden coombe in the folds of the hills. These purposeful walks are some of the best, they combine the art of the hunter with the hopeful expectation of the naturalist: I have a set purpose but am also open to a joyful serendipitous encounter that will divert me from my mission, leading to revelation and inspiration.


This is one of the great things about hunting for ancient and veteran trees. I know that I will meet a remarkable tree; that I will measure it, photograph it and know it. I also know that these trees hold many secrets. They have holes where bats live, mammals burrow around the roots and fungi gradually hollow their centres. So any meeting with an ancient tree holds the promise of meeting one of it's close family that will supply me with the joy of a surprise encounter.

Two trees, an ash and a willow, entangled one in another.

I remember meeting a wonderful ash tree in the Glyn Valley, Cornwall. It was a huge old tree standing near an old mill site. When the corn mill was working in the Nineteenth Century, the tree would have been quite venerable even then. When I encountered it, the top had blown out years before and new stems had sprouted up from it’s bole. The original trunk of the tree had hollowed out and I squeezed inside it to see what I could find. As I had suspected, it harboured bats and owls as evidenced by their distinctive droppings. But to my great delight I saw that the tree had started to grown internal roots. From high above my head, roots had sprouted and were writhing down through the rotting carcass of the old tree: the rejuvenated stems were feeding on the decaying remains of the original tree, extracting and recycling nutrients that it had first acquired in the previous century.

Such encounters open windows on the natural world, brief glimpses into lives and ways of living that are completely alien to humans. This is what makes purposeful walking so important to me. It is the mode of travel that enables the journey to take place. When I walk I am part of the world, I am in the landscape. In a car, or even on a bicycle, you travel over the land not through it. The Meanderthal on his or her stravaig will do so wrapped in thoughts of themselves, their mind free to dwell on their lives and loves past and present. My purpose consumes me, it removes all spurious cares and considerations from my life and focuses my mind on the job in hand. In my search for the designated target, I will inevitably come upon the unexpected revelation that brings delight as well as data.

Great Bustards!

The heat haze was streaming across the fields. As I looked through the 600mm lens, the buildings on Netheravon Airfield shimmered and shook as if rocked by an earthquake. Hot air burst in gouts from the top of fence posts, roofs and the old farm machinery that was lying beside a trackway. In front of the wobbly air stood one proud, erect figure. Once extinct, now returned, the Great Bustards of Salisbury Plain are spreading out across England but the centre of the Plain is still the best place to see them.

A lone bustard on the wide expanses of "Schedule 1" farmland on Salisbury Plain.

There is a huge amount of public access on Salisbury Plain and all the best places to see the bustards are accessible on foot. Having said that, the signs on the military training area are not just 'wooden falsehoods'; you need to take note. On the day when we were out looking at bustards, we were not far from the "Impact Area" and we could hear shells landing over the hill.

Bustards are often seen as figures on the sky-line and they have usually seen you long before you see them. Their heads are raised like periscopes as they examine you, then they slowly walk away over the hill with a slow, stately gait.

As we admired the lone, distant male we could see, I suddenly realised that much closer, only about 75 metres away, there were three males, their heads just raised above the spring barley. The two older males stood up and began to walk away from us.

We watched them for some time before they decided to fly over onto a more distant field. The Great Bustard is the heaviest flying bird in the world, yet it flies with such power and speed. You might imagine that it would lumber into the air like a swan and then heave it's way across the sky flapping madly to keep its great body airborne. Quite the opposite, they are truly majestic in the air. To see bustards flying across the open expanses of the Plain is to truly understand why they are called "Great" Bustards.

A mature, bearded male Great Bustard flies across Salisbury Plain.

Kit review: baldness, a buff and camera stuff.

Lots of us wildlife photographers share some key characteristics: maleness, baldness and the incipient problems of middle age. I've never found my maleness to be a problem, but being a baldy (and absolutely happy with it, I may add) means that I have always worn hats to hide my shiny pate from nervous wildlife and keep my head warm. My belated discovery of buffs has been a revelation and seems to offer other benefits as well that I detail further below. My ageing spine has also been hugely helped with a new harness, but first: the problem of keeping a camera and large lens protected and camouflaged ....

My camera has new pyjamas. Well, that's what I call it. In the picture below you can see that I have fitted a cammo sleeve to a 300mm lens. It is water proof, insulated and covers the camera body as well. It even has a pocket for one of those hand-warmer things so that you can keep your hands and DSLR working in arctic weather. While severe cold is not usually a problem here in England's balmy southwest, sudden heavy showers certainly are. However, the insulation really came into it's own when I was on location in Maharashtra last year, photographing tigers in temperatures of over 50 degrees Celsius. The camera body was too hot to touch if left in the sun for more than about ten minutes. As I was waiting out for up to three hours beside waterholes, this could have been an problem, to say the least. If you have read the previous posts about my visit to Tadoba, then you will recall the enveloping clouds of red dust stirred up by my guide's enthusiastic driving and the traffic jams around the waterholes. The thick insulation saved my DSLR and lenses from dust and cushioned them against the inevitable bumps and thumps as we hared around the park.

The sleeve fits over the 300mm lens and DSLR and has space for a x2 extender.

The sleeve helps with camouflaging the outline of the lens.

I got mine from Kevin Keatley at Wildlife Watching Supplies in Devon. I have not found a comparable product and I have always had good service from them, even when I've had a problem (which was my own fault, in fact).

Recently, I have been finding that after about an hour with binoculars and camera bag (complete with two DSLRs and lenses) I start to get serious neck pain. To be honest, this problem has been getting more serious for a long time. I have a couple of injuries to my neck vertebrae from smacking my head pretty hard on unyielding things, or unyielding things smacking me on the head. After thirty-and-some years of carrying binoculars, rifles and back packs around the countryside suspended from my neck and shoulders, my poor old spine starts to complain. I was unsure what to do about this until I saw another wildlife photographer in India, wandering around with his camera and lens attached to a harness. "Now THAT," I thought, "is what I need". So I sidled up to him and picked his brains and it turned out he had similar spinal issues and had found that the harnessing was the best idea. So my Christmas present to myself in 2016 was a Cotton Carrier.

The Cotton Carrier has transformed the way I use my smaller lenses when I am actively searching for subjects such as plants, insects and photographing events.

I got mine from Speed Graphic, but there are other importers and other types of harness. However, I recommend the Cotton system if you are out in the countryside as most of the other makes are better suited to wedding or sports photography.

One of the great features of the Cotton Carrier is the belt-and-braces approach to securing the camera to the photographer. The additional 'idiot strap' proved to be vital for this particular idiot when crossing a stile: the camera and lens swung free, but there was no nasty, expensive crunching sound as disaster was averted!

I've discovered buffs! I know I'm a bit late with all this, but then I've never claimed to be a style icon. In the pictures above, you can see that it is not only headwear, but can be used a face-veil as well. I was sent this one from Kitshack and while I have lots to learn about how to wear it (style icon status continues to elude me), I'm a convert. There seems to be a whole You Tube genre around wearing buffs, so there's plenty of advice. It's been a great boon under a cap on cold days. In the summer it will get the ultimate test when we head up to Ardnamurchan on Scotland's north-west coast and I use it to keep the dreaded Culicoides impunctatus, better known as the Highland midge. This 2mm long terror will put the microfibre buff through it's paces. If it works, I'll be so delighted that I'm sure to mention it in a summer posting!

The Winter River

A walk down the river in winter. The water levels are very low in the chalk streams and they are very quiet. However, when you look closer you see the shiny pads where water voles have been sitting and the black, crumbly spraints left by otters. Even on a cold, showery January afternoon, there is the occasional ring on the water as a grayling or trout swirls around to take some food off the bed or from the surface.

I'll come back in the spring to find the kingfisher nest and I might, just might, if I am really lucky, glimpse that elusive otter.

A stint on the Stinchar

In the middle of October, we decided to take the opportunity to head north and make a quick visit to Scotland.

First stop was with family near Pitlochry. I love the wooded hillsides and deep river valleys that characterise this area. Great mountains loom blackly in the distance; a backdrop that confirms you are in the 'proper' Highlands. The salmon were leaping at the Linn of Tummel, but with low water levels there were few fish moving. We did not manage to find a capercaillie, which was not surprising and it was disappointing to see that this wonderful bird seems to have lost the nature conservation popularity contest. The forests around Pitlochry used to be 'badged' and branded as capercaillie country. Images of them were everywhere; not just postcards, but on the forest gateways, roadside billboards and everyone seemed to be committed to the return of this huge, charismatic grouse. Now, it is hard to get a sense that this area still holds any capers at all. All the signs have come down and the Forestry Commission has moved on. They are no longer managing their extensive forests for capercaillie. The only efforts seem to be made by a few private landowners.

Red squirrels, on the other hand, seem to be doing well. We had some lovely views of squirrels. It was dark, so the images are nothing to boast about, but we loved spending time with this delicate, agile little beast.

From Pitlochry, we moved down to Ayrshire and stayed at the Alton Albany B&B. This was a real find. A lovely room, great breakfast, welcoming hosts and ... most important for us ... right beside the River Stinchar.

Again, water levels were very low. The Stinchar can roar when it's in spate, but when we were there the pools were so low that the sea trout were trapped into them; waiting for some rain so that they could move up to their spawning grounds.

We were hoping to have some close encounters of the ottery kind, but that will have to wait for another trip to Ardnamurchan. While we were waiting out beside the water, a dipper came scudding up the stream to alight on a branch in the water. You don't often hear dippers sing, partly because it is a soft mellifluous song, but also because of the constant rattle and chatter of the water in the rocky streams where they live. The image below was taken at first light, so it's a little grainy.

The Alton Albany Farm B&B can be found here: http://www.altonalbanyfarm.com and we will be back to see them soon!

Ten Days in Tadoba Part 5: TIGER!

Pug mark, or footprint, of a female tiger (front right foot)

During my stay in Tadoba-Andhari National Park some of the treasured moments were when the rattling around in jeeps was interspersed with long waits beside water-holes and in the shade of teak trees; waiting for action. These are times when you can sit quietly and let your senses reach out into the jungle around you; listen to the crackling-dry forest floor that alerts you to even the smallest animal movement, the thrum of insects in the forest canopy and the constant chorus of doves, parakeets and other small birds. I never tired of the dusty smell of the jungle at dawn, the sweet, cloying scent of flowering trees and vines and the sudden delight of coming across trees such as Flame of the Forest (Butea grandis) and flowering vines that relieve the grey-green of bamboo thickets.

The Ghost Tree (Sterculia urens) is a member of the mallow family and one of the most prominent trees at Tadoba. 

But when all that is said and done, I had come to see tiger. Those two syllables had come to take on a huge significance after I had saved for years, spent more than I cared to think about and invested a huge effort in planning the trip.

When I arrived at the lodge for my stay close to Tadoba, one of the first things I noticed was the live feed to closed circuit cameras around the area. In order that I should be in no doubt that I was in the very best place to see tiger, the past high-lights were played for me. It was great to see the footage of tigers walking within a few metres of the lodge, but it built my expectation to an almost unbearable pitch. My first three days were tigerless, and to return to the lodge to see that tigers had been caught on camera walking almost beside my room increased my sense of loss.

Guests are joined by the naturalists for dinner, the sights and experiences of the day can be shared and plans for the following morning discussed. Sometimes, before the lights are turned off around the lodge grounds, a tiger or leopard gets up from it’s resting place nearby, disturbing a muntjac that will suddenly start barking. Everyone freezes around the table, listening intently, staff come out quietly from the kitchen to listen as well: everyone rapt by the sounds of the nightly jungle drama getting underway.

I was awake at 12.30 am on the morning of Day 3 at Tadoba, listening to the humming of the nightjars, the gentle buzz of insects and breathing in the nightime smells of the jungle as it cooled down after a hot day. A sambar belled on the other side of the water hole, the honking call denoting that it had seen or smelled a tiger close by. Later that day I looked at the trail cam images, but nothing showed. Tigers slip through the jungle unseen even by modern camera technology, but a sambar’s sensitive nose can pick up the tell-tale scent drifting on the breeze. Molecules of moisture that carry the sweat, hair fibres and skin cells of the tiger are drawn into the wide black nostrils of the sambar, coming to rest against it’s super-sensitive mucosal membranes in the deer’s long muzzle. Olfactory nerves are instantly triggered, firing into the animal’s brain so that images of tiger flash across its imagination, eliciting immediate responses from the muscles and adrenal glands as the whole animal prepares for flight. That loud call, bursting from its chest, holds in it all the terror and the excitement that the great predators inspire.

Having had to wait for three days to see Maya and her cubs (see Ten Days in Tadoba Part 2), I was prepared to endure a similar wait to see Sonam and her three cubs. Sonam is not such a mega-star as Maya, being a lot more fussy about the company she keeps and I had been told that seeing her would be more difficult. So when we arrived at the waterhole at ten to nine in the morning I was prepared for a long-ish wait and when she appeared out of the jungle at five past nine, strolled down the water’s edge, turned and reversed gracefully into the water, I was completely unprepared. In comparison to Maya, who was always over one hundred metres distant, Sonam was close, about fifty metres.

Tigress Sonam eased herself into the water.

Sonam, in all her glory 

She soaked herself in the pool for forty minutes, having been joined by three cubs. Each cub had walked down the steep bank to their mother and briefly greeted her, making the obeisance that is customary between young tigers and their elders and betters.

One of her cubs approaches to make the proper obeisance to her mother

However, when Sonam lifted herself clear of the water and made her way back into the jungle, she was followed by just two cubs.

The smallest cub stayed behind. He could hear his mother calling softly to him and he replied with a few yowls and a complete refusal to follow. He walked through the water, free to explore a bit now that his siblings and parent were no longer there. As he waded through the green water and mud of the pool he put one paw onto something buried in the mud.

The Something moved.

It wriggled and tried to escape, so he dug his claws into it and sat on it.

Bubbles surround the cub as her fumbles in the mud for the Something he had found

I could see his shoulders moving as he kneaded whatever The Something was, a look of intense concentration on his face as tried to work out what it was that he had caught.

A large catfish?

Perhaps a terrapin?

He ducked his head down and tried to see it, but that was no good because the water was a thick algal soup and The Something had disturbed the mud. Each time he ducked down below the surface, he came back up quickly looking particularly bedraggled, snorting and sneezing the water out of his nose and blinking it out of his eyes.

He tried to look down to see it.

It was no good, so he went down for a closer look.

Eventually, The Something slipped from his grasp and he lost interest. At this point, he decided that he might as well obey his mother and follow her off in to the jungle.

The following day, Sonam appeared again at almost precisely nine o’clock in the morning. This time, the cubs came to the pool before their mother. They lurked under a fallen tree trunk for a time, staring across the water at the large crowd on the opposite bank.

Sonam's three cubs, the naughty cub is in the front.

 When Sonam came to the water she dipped herself in a few metres away from them. Each cub then came up to her in turn to rub heads with her a reassure her of their devotion. Devotion undoubtedly, but not always obedience and as I suspected, the naughtiest cub came out on his own and swam about yowling, making faces at us and being a generally bad little tiger. He tried out some proper snarls on the battery of lenses pointed in his direction.

Snarling at the photographer's didn't work. But if he does it in a couple of years time it will get a much more satisfying reaction.

 All that happened was a flurry of shutter-clicks, so he stopped that and waded a little further away. He found a good depth, where he was up to his shoulders in the water, and then proceeded to roll and splash about, getting thoroughly muddy in the process.

Rolling one way ....

... and then the other.

 Two days after that wonderful morning, I was sitting in the jeep with the tiger tracking team of Bonay, the naturalist, Lohoo our very experienced driver, and the Forest Service tourist guide. It had rained heavily the night before and the jungle was full of puddles and all the water holes had expanded. Bonay had warned me in the morning that the chances of seeing anything when there was so much water about were very low. The morning drive had been quiet and I had low expectations in the afternoon. We parked beside the forest road with the jungle on one side and an open meadow on the other. Lohoo stopped the engine and we waited. A sambar called very close by, about thirty metres from us in the dense bamboo. It was so loud that it felt like five meters. The sambar continued to call, honking like an air-horn with a peculiar squeak at the end.

“Leopard!” said Lohoo with a serious look on his face. “Definitely leopard”. He nodded sagely.

I asked him how he knew. He explained that the distinctive squeak denoted ‘leopard’ rather than ‘tiger’ in sambarese.

I felt that I had learned a bit of esoteric tiger-tracking knowledge. Anyone could hear alarm calls, but now I would be able to interpret them too.

I made sure that the camera was ready and took some test shots to adjust the exposure. I started systematically scanning the jungle edge. I wanted to be the first one to ‘spot the leopard’ (pun intended) when it approached the open area. There was no breeze. No leaf was stirring on the branches or on the ground.

Just one leaf moved gently to and fro. I stared at it for a while, wondering what would make just one leaf move in that regular metronomic manner. I began to suspect that I was not looking at a leaf or indeed any part of a plant but an animal or part thereof. Could it be a snake’s head, swinging side to side as it searched for prey in the leaf-litter? Not wanting to make a fool of myself, I slowly lifted my binoculars up to my eyes and focussed in on the “leaf”. Not a snake, but a nightjar.

A nightjar running away. Nightjar legs are widely spaced and very, very short. So short and wide-apart are they that ‘running’ is a very loose description of what this bird was doing. What I had thought was a leaf swaying in situ was in fact this small bird racing away from me as fast as it could go and making no discernible progress. I wondered if nightjars have nightmares where they think they are not running very fast but actually are? I pointed him out to the team. Bonay saw him, but Lohoo and the Guide could not see it which made me feel very smug. It’s not often that you spot things before your guides.

The tension brought on by the sambar calls had started to bleed away. Our leopard-expectation had reduced and we had returned to our usual state of relaxed watchfulness. Bonay looked up at me and said,

“Maybe you should go into the jungle now? You could introduce yourself to nice Mr Leopard and ask to take his picture!”

There was much Indian tittering at this. I put on my thoughtful face, as if I was considering this deeply, then smiled at him and responded with,

“Hey! I’ve got a better idea! Why doesn’t Bonay go into the forest instead? He could make a noise like a lost baby chital … and then get killed photogenically.”

This was poo-pooed as a ridiculous suggestion of the kind that someone who sees running nightjars might come up with.

It was fortunate that neither of us took up the other’s dare, because just at that moment a very large male tiger stepped out of the forest and glowered at us.

Tiger Madkasur, a young and comparatively unscarred territorial male.

He was huge. So close that I could only get part of his face into the frame of the 600mm lens. I fizzed off a few dozen frames, thankful that I had kept re-adjusting the exposure levels as the light subtly changed.

I glanced down at Lohoo who was turned round in the drivers seat, “Definitely a leopard then, Lohoo? Absolutely and for sure a leopard!” More Indian titters and sniggers, quickly silenced by some dark looks from our driver.

The tiger’s name was Madkasur and he chuffed through his whiskers as he walked close by the jeep, almost touching it with his massive striped flank. It is a soft, gentle sound that must be heeded by those for whom it is meant.

Madkasur was assuring us that he was happy and that just so long as we stayed where we were and didn’t do anything too repugnant then all would be well; any lapse of etiquette with a tiger can end very badly.

He crossed the forest road and stopped to briefly cast his eye over the scene. Then he headed out onto the meadow. Great head swinging, he plodded forward in deceptively slow stride that took him quickly away from us.

Walking out into the grass.

Lohoo spun back round and started the engine.

“Hang on!” cried Bonay as we lurched back onto the road and drove down to a small track that cut out onto the meadow. We managed to cut around in front of him and stop just as he came out of some long grass in front. I was able to get a whole series of full body shots that show how the tiger walks with a swinging gait.

A tiger's gait is a perfect combination of stealth, power and grace.

This is caused by his forepaws being pushed out in front of him as he takes each step and placed carefully with the side of the paw striking the ground first, then rolled flat as he transfers weight onto it. This cautious step allows him to feel dry twigs, loose stones and crackly leaves before he puts his full weight down. As he walks, he is subconsciously changing the way his weight is distributed across each foot. In this way he can walk silently across the forest floor, sliding his great frame through the thickest jungle without a sound. Before disappearing from view he looked over at me, handsome face rimmed by the ruff of fur characteristic of male tigers, then went on his way.

During my stay at Tadoba I had a brief sighting of a leopard. A female sitting about fifty metres inside the jungle, partly obscured in the bamboo. There was a crush of jeeps and buses on the narrow forest road, everyone was pointing and cooing and sharing the experience; apart from me. For the life of me, I could not see the leopard. Bonay got increasingly frustrated with my inability to see the beast.

“There! There! There! Beside the bamboo. There. Can you see the bamboo? Right beside the bamboo!” he cried in desperation, clutching my arm. As we were inside a bamboo thicket, none of his directions really picked out any one particular spot. Then he tried to tell me gently. Then he took my camera off me and took the pictures himself. Then I saw her. Not a good image to be had, but a lovely sighting of the most delectable of all the big cats.

One of Bonay's hand-held, manually focussed images - great stuff!

Towards the end of my stay, I was rewarded by more tiger sightings in the Moharli Beat of “New Tadoba”; an area that has only recently been added to the Park. It borders a very large lake. We saw Madrihuri, a female, crossing and re-crossing the forest road as she went to her unweaned cubs, fed them from her body and returned to the lakeside to stay cool.

Tiger crossing road pic 0181

In the afternoon we watched another female, Aishwarya, take a quick dunk in a little man-made tank and then go over to the male Waghdoh and tell him to get up and go and fend for her and her cubs. I never saw him properly, which was a shame because “Scarface”, as he is known, is the largest male in the Park.

Tigers are addictive. If you have read all the way to this last paragraph then you might just be as addicted as me. Don’t fight it. The only thing you can do is feed the addiction. See you in the jungle!

Mesmeric

Cover pic 9571