Rufous Treepie

June 12th, 2009

by Krishna Mohan

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.

EXIF info…
Camera: Canon EOS 5D Mark II
Lens: EF400mm f/5.6L USM
Exposure Mode: Auto exposure
Exposure Time: 1/200 sec.
Exposure Bias: 0.0
Aperture (F Stop): f/5.6
ISO Used: 800
Flash Used: Flash did not fire, compulsory flash mode.
White Balance: As Shot
Focal Length: 400.0 mm
Metering Mode: Pattern
Date Time: 2009:06:10 14:32:23
GPS Location in Google Map:
13° 4' 1.6" N, 74° 59' 44.2" E, 636 m.a.s.l.
Copyright © Krishna Mohan
All rights Reserved. This Image may not be copied, reproduced, distributed, republished, downloaded, displayed, posted or trasmitted in any forms or by any means, including electronic, mechanical, photocopying & recording without my written permission. If you’d like to make usage request, just ask: drkrishi@drkrishi.com

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2 Responses to “Rufous Treepie”

Arun Prabhu Says:
January 21st, 2010 at 10:55 AM

Great foto! Krish….you could catch sharp details of this bird. Its tail is so long that part of it has gone beyond the DOF of this image!! I too have taken a pic but the bird was perched way too far off