WILDLIFE OF INDIA Chinmaya as cameraman
Filmed with a low budget non-HD camera, so based on patience and luck!
Filmed over three years from my garden near Mapusa. I was lucky to live next to a stream, a rice field and a rare piece of old lowland forest. Several dozen species are represented (though I have seen upwards of 100 species here), including the difficult-to-film Blue-faced malkoha and Black-naped monarch.
A rare visit from India’s largest and most spectacular forest bird. A pair set to work demolishing an old coconut stump in my garden. They must have flown dozens of kilometers from the nearest wild forest in the Western Ghats.
I filmed this during three visits in May, over three years, in Pithoagarh and Kapkot Districts, at altitudes between 1500 and 2000 meters.
Note: The second shot of the Grey bushchat is actually an Ultramarine flycatcher; and a Blue-throated flycatcher is mis-identified as Rufous-bellied nitava.
I was fortunate indeed to get this close, and for this long, to such a powerful (and dangerous) animal! Luckily for me he was on the other side of the river. I was trekking to Kaphni Glacier, on the southern flanks of Nanda Devi (25,500 ft) in the Kumaon Himalaya (Uttarkhand State, India) in July 2008.
It was early morning and he didn’t see me, intent as he was on crossing the water. It is incredible to watch him wading through fast flowing glacial melt, that would knock a human off his or her feet in seconds!
These bears are hunted for their gall bladders and claws (used in traditional Chinese medicine), and are everywhere threatened by loss of habitat as forests make way for new villages and fields. Nanda Devi Biosphere Reserve is still a relatively safe place for them because of it’s remoteness, and the presence of trekkers and Forest Department staff.