The final salute

Wishing you all a very happy new year. Its been a while since I posted here. A combination of factors – work, travel, personal engagements etc. kept me away.

So let me start this year with a picture that summarizes a memorable trip to a place called Tal Chhapar in Northern India. This place is around 5 hours drive from New Delhi and is interestingly an hour or so away from the place where I did my graduation. Its a different matter that while I was graduating birding and photography were not really on my mind. Otherwise I would have discovered this place 20 years ago.

Tal Chhapar is a large grassland and is the raptor central of India. Every winter a large number of raptors descend here and this Laggar Falcon is one such migrant.

One of the star attraction of Tal Chappar is the abundant availability of Indian Spiny Tailed Lizards (Saara hardwickii ). If there was a chicken tikka equivalent for some of these raptors then this lizard would qualify 🙂 Interestingly oil extracts from this lizard is considered an aphrodisiac and supposedly acts as a cure for impotency !

Laggar falcons are a mid sized bird of prey. They were once a common bird in the Indian subcontinent but their population has declined and is currently classified as Near Threatened as per IUCN.

I will post a few more of the raptor clicks. But this photograph is one of my favourites from this trip.