Field Notes & Wanderings

A loose collection — barbets, a barn owl in an old stable, a hoopoe on a Delhi lawn, an Indian Vulture against thunderclouds.

Not every photograph belongs to a trip. Some belong to a Saturday morning in a friend's village in the foothills; some to a thunderstorm that caught you on a Delhi rooftop; some to an old stable where a Barn Owl had set up shop and didn't mind, particularly, being photographed.

This is a loose page for those frames — the in-between birds, the wanderings, the long Sunday afternoons on a friend's farmhouse balcony with a long lens and a pot of tea.

The Barn Owl in the Stable

A Barn Owl, if you have never been close to one, is an unsettling combination of grace and small, alien expression. We found this one at evening, in the loft of an old stone stable a hundred kilometres east of Delhi. He looked at us — that long, level, heart-shaped look — and went on grooming a flight feather as if photographers were a perfectly normal Tuesday.

Owls of the day

The day-active owlets are easier company. The Asian Barred Owlet — small, fierce, and almost always somewhere on a sunny low branch above a forest path — is one of the most rewarding small birds to photograph in north India. The Brown Hawk Owl, on the other hand, is nocturnal and almost always tucked into a daytime roost so well that you walk past him three times before someone points him out.

Barbets, hoopoes, and a vulture in cloud

There are entire afternoons in north India whose entire photographic content is one barbet on one branch — and that turns out to be enough. The Great Barbet is improbably loud for a bird so green; the Blue-throated Barbet is more cautious but flat-out beautiful in mid-monsoon light. The Eurasian Hoopoe — a Delhi lawn regular — is one of those species that everybody who has ever held a camera tries, fails, tries again, and finally gets right one ordinary Sunday.

And then, occasionally, the larger birds choose you. An Indian Vulture — once almost gone from north India, now slowly recovering — sailing in across thunderclouds at altitude. A Greater Flameback against the dark side of a babul tree. A Streaked Laughingthrush as a punctuation mark at the end of a long, unproductive ridge walk.

These are the in-between frames — the ones I love because they remind me that wildlife photography is not, in the end, a series of large expensive trips. It is a slow, steady habit of paying attention to the country you live in.

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