Had a fun morning with Rose ringed Parakeets at home. One female sat at the edge of this rubble stone stair well and then dived down to disappear out of my frame.
She immediately took a U turn and I found her back in my frame. Looked as if she was admiring the wall
Slowly heading to the only hole in the wall to chew on the rubble stone edges for minerals
The male parakeet didn’t give much of a damn about the wall….
…took off from a steel pillar and headed straight for the hole in the wall. If you know where they are heading exactly then it becomes easy to capture
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Introduction not a reintroduction. We are not “reintroducing” a species that went extinct recently in India, instead we are “introducing” an alien predator in a habitat where they never ever existed.
I am not convinced that there was a wild population of cheetahs in India, that went extinct recently. There would have been cheetahs in Baluchistan but not in the present day India, at least not in the last few centuries.
Thousands of cheetahs were imported from Central Asia and Africa by the rich in India for over a 1000 years, mostly to be trained as “hunting leopards” for hunting or to be hunted down themselves
Cheetahs - an Introduction or Reintroduction. India’s Wildlife (Protection) Act, 1972 forbids the introduction of exotic species to India’s wilds, even if they are genetically close to their Indian subspecies. It is illegal to even provide them with wild prey in captivity.
The cheetahs that we are getting are captive bred African cheetahs (Acinonyx jubatus jubatus), a different sub species (or genetically different) from the Asiatic cheetah (Acinonyx jubatus venaticus). Therefore, it’s being called a “Reintroduction’ because Introduction is illegal
“Assessing the potential for reintroducing the cheetah in India”, a report from 2010 claims that 27 cheetahs could be sustained in the 347 sq. km of Kuno Wildlife Sanctuary. Kuno was a sanctuary at the time and half the present-day size of Kuno National Park.
05:11 pm Ranthambhore 23rd June 2022 - A tigress called Laila in Bhakola valley. We saw her sitting in a pool of water behind some bushes about half an hour ago. They s was the third or fourth picture I took, after she got up and started walking.
She crossed to our jeep’s left to spray mark a tree and then walked into a narrow entrance to a valley that widen up ahead. We drove on to park at where we thought we might catch up with her - a beautiful setting that tigers normally avoid.
Normally avoid - but today was an exception. I love these Rock formations and couldn’t believe she was walking through them.
Let me show you some ancient architecture from Ranthambhore national park on #WorldPhotographyDay
This building, same as the one in the previous picture, is known as the Choti (or small) Chattri, so called because there is a larger one nearby called (not very creatively) Badi (or big) chattri. It’s basically a elevated, dome-shaped pavilion with a Shivling under it
Then there is this one very close to Choti Chattri. The platform is still there but not the rest.
Been on safaris in Ranthambhore for two weeks now. When I started it was hot & the forest was dry. Hardly an colours except in the few evergreen groves along permanent water sources. Pictures had a brown background
Two days later it rained for a few hours which is a lot for us here. That totally transformed the forest. Water became available all over so the animals scattered across the forest. They now didn’t need to stay close to water holes. Water is everywhere
Once the predominant tree here - Anogeissus pendula or Dhonk as we call it locally - turns green, the number of animals that one sees in the lower reaches goes down drastically but the background becomes very interestingly green.