Jungle Owlet

 I admit that I am NOT a birder.  I am also terrible about remembering the names of birds, unless I see them over and over again or they are particularly distinctive for some reason.  I ran into birders all over India and I am sure I saw tons of birds that birders would be envious of.  I did my best to capture some of the more memorable birds in photos and we shall see if I can correctly identify the majority of them - or how close I come!

This one I really remember for sure because it was the first bird of the trip that really got my attention!  It is a jungle owlet - or so I am told.  It's a small owl with great eyes.  I really like owls and was lucky enough to see several varieties during the trip - but this was the first.  This was also the point where I really began to prefer the Sony Cybershot DSC-HX200V I purchased (primarily for its motion stability features) over the Panasonic Lumix - even though the Lumix was always my camera of choice on past trips and I have never owned a Sony before.  From this point forward in the trip the majority of photos were with the Sony; there was just no comparison between the two when it came to zoom and focus or stability adjustments.  I've never taken two cameras on a trip before, but I felt I needed a back up as travel for a month offers a lot of chances for things to go wrong and it would be silly to be a long, expensive trip to see wildlife and not be able to take any photos for lack of a camera.  One thing that happened was that my guide would often offer to operate the second camera, so for some of my better sightings I actually have twice as many photos as I normally would, which turned out to be pretty cool.

Despite the best efforts of my guide, Nerinkar,  to explain to me where this owl was, I could not see it.  Not at all.  Then he took one of my cameras and zoomed in to show me where it was and then, finally, I could see the owl for myself and get a few photos.  Of course shortly thereafter it flew off.