Jayamangali Blackbuck Reserve is a protected area for Blackbucks located around 87 miles from Bangalore. I visited the place on a Sunday, recently. Here are some photos from the trip...
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A friend and I set off early in the morning at about 3 am, in the hope of sighting the Blackbucks before the sun forces them to hide in the woods. We reached the Reserve just before sunrise...
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Soon the sun came out giving us a glimpse of a couple of Blackbucks...
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A closeup of the sun...
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Blackbucks are also known as Indian Antelope. They are extremely wary of humans and will vanish within no time if we approach by foot. But they seemed to tolerate us if we stay in the car. We surreptitiously moved our car closer to them in the grassland habitat. A group of juvenile males were seen...
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A juvenile with its corkscrew horns...
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Two juveniles practice lekking. Male blackbucks engage in competitive displays to entice visiting females. Here the juveniles are supervised by an adult...
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Here's a male adult...
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We moved to another location to find a group of female Blackbucks...
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The females lack the horns...
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The female herd is usually accompanied by a male who keeps a watchful eye. The male ensures that nobody strays away from the group..
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One of them strayed away...
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The male rushes to bring her back to the herd...
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Two dogs played spoilsport. Their presence made the deer vanish, abruptly halting our shoot.
I saw a Red-wattled Lapwing next...
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We drove around in search of birds. A Eurasian Hoopoe was foraging in the grass...
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A White-eyed Buzzard was spotted next...
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A Laughing Dove (Little Brown Dove)...
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A male Pied Bushchat...
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The view of hills nearby...
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I saw another male Blackbuck leisurely regurgitating and chewing to mix the cud with saliva...
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A Blister beetle. It is so called for their defensive secretion of a blistering agent, cantharidin...
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By 8:30 am butterflies started to become active. A Pioneer butterfly...
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A juvenile Oriental Garden Lizard looked cute...
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Red Collared-Dove (Red Turtle-Dove). There was no dearth of this beauty...
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An Indian Peafowl was seen next. It has almost the same level of shyness as the blackbucks. It did the vanishing act as soon as it sensed our presence...
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A male Rose-ringed Parakeet peeped out from behind a tree...
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It was 9 am and we decided to return. An Indian Roller was seen on our way back...
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We waited for it to fly to capture its stunning wings. But it stayed there with occasional, long, 'Kaarsch' calls for close to 10 minutes...
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And just when we were losing patience, it spread its wings...
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The open wings motivated us and we waited for some more time to see the flight. Then it flew and I clicked at will...
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I got one more shot of the flight from the burst of clicks...
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On the way back we also saw a Greater Coucal, another bird of the extremely shy category...
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The last sighting of the day was a Large Grey Babbler with his meal...
Thus ended a moderately satisfying trip. This place has many more interesting species and multiple visits are required to see most of them. Hope I can return soon.
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