Ashy Prinia

I seem to be getting friendly with this Ashy Prinia (Prinia socialis). The Scientific name is also socialis . Anyway this Bird was posing for my Canon EF 400mm f/5.6 L USM with 24mm Kenko extension tube. Bird was hardly 2 meters from me.

Ashy Prinia Closeup

Here is another closeup of the same bird

Ashy Prinia

The Ashy Prinia or Ashy Wren-Warbler (Prinia socialis), is a small warbler. This prinia is a resident breeder in the Indian subcontinent, western Myanmar and Sri Lanka. It is a familiar bird of urban gardens and farmland in many parts of India and its small size, distinctive colours and upright tail make it easy to identify.

White-rumped Munia

The White-rumped Munia or White-rumped Mannikin (Lonchura striata). These are close relatives of the true finches (Fringillidae) and true sparrows (Passeridae).

The White-rumped Munia is approximately 10 to 11 cm in length, with a stubby grey bill and a long black pointed tail. The adults are brown above and on the breast, and lighter below; the rump is white. This is theLonchura striata striata (Linnaeus, 1766) subspecies – Southwestern White-rumped Munia found in Southern Indian mainland. It has Dark chocolate-brown above, white below.

The White-rumped Munia is a common resident breeder ranging from South Asia to southern China east to Taiwan, and through Southeast Asia south to Sumatra; it frequents open woodland, grassland and scrub, and is well able to adapt to agricultural land use. It is a gregarious bird which feeds mainly on seeds, moving through the undergrowth in groups and sometimes accompanying other birds such as Puff-throated Babblers (Pellorneum ruficeps). The nest is a large domed grass structure in a tree, bush or grass into which 3-8 white eggs are laid.

It is a common and widespread bird across its large range, and is thus not considered a threatened species by the IUCN. In fact, it may locally become a nuisance pest of millets and similar grains. Even the Nicobar Islands subspecies with its limited range seems to be able to cope well with human settlement. As it is a drab-colored and rather reclusive bird inhabiting dense undergrowth, the White-rumped Munia is not necessarily conspicuous even where it occurs in considerable numbers.

Male Loten's Sunbird

Last Sunday I had plenty of birds to shoot. It had stopped raining and birds were busy finding nest materials. I stood beside a milk weed bush whaich had dry seed pod with silk in it. That day I got several good shots.Here is one of the Male Loten’s Sunbird(Cinnyris lotenius) from that day’s photography.

Edit: After Shiva’s Comment I thought of removing the noise from the image. Reason for this noise was Under exposure which was corrected in light room as well as cropping as I had taken this with my X Canon EF 400mm f/5.6 L USM without Tele converter.

Loten's Sunbird after Noiseware

Here is the result from Noiseware Plugin. I started using Imagenomic Noiseware after I found it better than NoiseNinja, Nik Dfine 2.1, Neat Image.

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.