Yellow Billed Babbler
I found this Yellow-billed Babbler (Turdoides affinis) searching for insects in the dried undergrowth. Shot using Canon EOS 5D mark II with Canon EF 400mm f/5.6 L USM at around 3 meters from camera. That was the closest I can focus with 400mm lens 
Tags: Canon EF 400mm f/5.6 L USM, Canon EOS 5D mark II, Turdoides affinis, Yellow-billed Babbler
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Male Giant Crab Spider
Today for breakfast I had a house guest in my kitchen. A Male giant crab spider also known as common house spider(Heteropoda venatoria), huntsman spider, banana spider (due to its occasional appearance in marketed bananas) appeared over a kitchen tile. He was a huge guy, body around 3 inches in size. He was patient enough to give me several of his nice poses as he was cleaning his fangs with his palps. I unhurriedly took several of his great shots using my trusty Canon EF 100mm f/2.8 USM Macro on my Canon EOS 5D mark II. Here are 3 shots one full body and other head shot for your appraisal. The background you see is the yellow kitchen tile. These spiders belong to family Sparassidae.
Male Giant Crab Spider closeup
Giant Crab Spiders get their name by waiting for prey to come close, and like lions, chase their prey for short distances. Contrary to their gangly and cumbersome appearance, these spiders are very fast and are able to chase down their prey with ease. These spiders are extremely aggressive, will arch up to make displays to frighten off perceived threats, and will tenaciously cling to attackers or perceived attackers if they think it will protect them. Given any other circumstance, these spiders are designed to slip through holes and cracks and will escape if they feel outmatched.
Male Giant Crab Spider Close up
Huntsman Spiders are not harmful to humans, and although big and scary, are certainly not strong enough to carry off or take a bite out of a human. They will bite in self-defense, in which case they are not venomous, and the only result will be a big red spider bite. As mentioned before, they do cling if picked up, and will most likely bite, making a close-up Huntsman encounter a frightening and potentially painful one, but ultimately not life-threatening. These Spiders mainly eat insects, other spiders and sometimes small lizards and snakes.Big enough Hunstmen might kill and digest very small rodents.
Ever seen Arachnophobia (1990) with Jeff Daniels and John Goodman? It also starred an unnumbered cast of Delena cancerides, aka Avondale Spiders. These little, harmless, yet ultimately frightening spiders are Family Sparassidae (same family as our Giant Crab Spider) and come from Australia. They were “trained” by an entomologist to move through and into scenes on cue using hair dryers to goad them along. Note: The big spider in the movie is actually a species of tarantula. They eat birds among other things but are relatively harmless to humans.
Tags: Banana spider, Canon EF 100mm f/2.8 USM Macro, Canon EOS 5D mark II, Common House Spider, Heteropoda venatoria, Huntsman Spider, Moodabidri, spider
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Rufous Treepie
We had few drizzle the other day and a visitor to our garden the Rufous Treepie (Dendrocitta vagabunda). I wanted to catch both the drizzle as well as the bird in a single shot. So I used a slow shutterspeed of 1/200 the second. You can see some streaks of rain drops in the picture. Not an ideal speed to catch rain drops (1/60 is the best speed to catch those rain drops) since I had no IS on my Canon EF 400mm f/5.6 L USM which will make the picture blurry. So 1/200 was a compromise I had to live with.
The Rufous Treepie (Dendrocitta vagabunda) is an Asian treepie, a member of the Corvidae (crow) family. The underparts and lower back are a warm tawny-brown to orange-brown in colour with white wing coverts and black primaries. The tail is a light bluish-grey with a thick black band on the tip. The bill, legs and feet are black. The range of this species is quite large, covering all of India up to the Himalayas, and southeasterly in a broad band into Burma (Myanmar), Laos, and Thailand in open forest consisting of scrub, plantations and gardens.
This is a typically arboreal species feeding almost completely in trees on fruits, invertebrates, small reptiles and the eggs and young of birds; it has also been known to take flesh from recently killed carcasses. It is extremely agile while searching for food, clinging and clambering through the branches and will sometimes travel in small mixed hunting parties with unrelated species such as drongos and babblers. This species has a variety of calls, but a bob-o-link call is the commonest along with a variety of harsh calls.
Tags: birds, Canon EF 400mm f/5.6 L USM, Canon EOS 5D mark II, Moodabidri, Rufous Treepie
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