Lesser Whistling Duck

Driving down to my home town from Mangalore, I saw these Lesser Whistling Ducks in a nearby paddy field. They were wading in the shallow rainwater filled paddy field far off from the main road. I chose my Canon EF 300mm f/2.8L IS USM fitted with Canon EF 2X II Extender on my Canon EOS 1D Mark IV body. As the ground was soggy with rain I was not able to place the mono-pod on the ground. So leaving the mono-pod on the car I tried to hand hold the heavy rig and waded towards these ducks. Despite being shy I was able to get quite a few photos. Despite not using a good support, I was able to get few satisfactory photos due to higher shutter speed I used. At around 5kilo weight, the rig is quite heavy to handhold for very long time. What I usually do is to rest it on my folded elbow till I need to photograph and then lift and get the photo. This gives enough rest for your wrist to cope up with the heavy camera.

Pair of Lesser Whistling Ducks

The Lesser Whistling Duck (Dendrocygna javanica), also known as Indian Whistling Duck, is a small sized whistling duck which breeds in south and south-east Asia. It was called the Lesser Whistling Teal in the past. Called whistling ducks because of their call, they are also sometimes called tree ducks because they are seen often perching on trees near water bodies. Some nest in Tree holes too.

Lesser Whistling Duck

Lesser Whistling Ducks eat aquatic vegetation by dabbling on the water surface in shallow water. Like other waterfowl, they have a highly sensitive, fleshy tongue which has a spiny surface. To efficiently sift for edible titbits, the tongue is worked against rows of horny lamellae that line the mandibles. This produces the typical chattering sound of feeding waterfowl. They also dive frequently for underwater titbits. Lesser Whistling Ducks feed mostly at night, in small family groups.

Pair of Lesser Whistling Ducks

Their call is described as a three-note whistle, the last note highest pitched and prolonged. The call is a wheezy, whistling “seasick, seasick”, call, uttered in flight. Shy and nervous, they fly off at the slightest hint of danger. A flock will fly quickly, and in a direct manner, usually in chevron formation. This duck flies like a goose with its long neck sticking out and drooping below the body, and wings beating rapidly. Lesser Whistling Ducks are different from other ducks in having longer legs, a squarish head and an erect goose-like posture when alert. Their wings are also rounder and broader. Unlike other ducks, males and females look similar, and there is no special breeding plumage.

Pair of Lesser Whistling Ducks

Lesser Whistling Ducks prefer a nest site near freshwater with dense vegetation nearby where their chicks can immediately reach the water after hatching. Usually in a bed of tall reeds, sometimes in a hollow log, or even an abandoned heron’s nest. They build a shallow cup of grass, on or close to the ground. They may rearrange surrounding vegetation to form a roof with a side-entrance. Sometimes they nest in trees. 10-12 creamy white eggs are laid. If the nest is closer to the ground, parents will distract predators by faking a broken wing and moving away from the nest.

Pair of Lesser Whistling Ducks on Paddy field

Kadambi Waterfall

Waterfalls are some of the most beautiful natural wonders you can photograph. But though they can look simply stunning, photographing waterfalls is not easy to do well. That Sunday I had gone to Kudremukh National Park hoping to photograph some birds or animals. It was drizzling on & off. As I couldn’t get any good sighting that day, I thought I will try my luck photographing tried and tested Bonnet Macaques at Kadambi falls which were featured in my blog earlier. Even they were on holiday. All I could get was a fleeting glimpse of Female Grey wagtail (Motacilla cinerea) on a very vertical slope of the waterfall.

Female Grey Wagtail

So disappointed I turned towards the waterfall. To make matter worse the rain increased in intensity. After few minutes of a heavy rain there was brief break. That is when I tried to take few photos of the waterfall. For the waterfall photography light was perfect. There was no need of any ND filter as the light was very low intensity. I only used circular polarizer filter. I used my newly purchased Canon EOS 5D mark II with Canon EF 24-105mm f/4.0 L IS Lens. As it was raining I did not have time to setup tripod. The bridge across the waterfall gave a nice view of the waterfall. So I opted to support the camera on the bridge railing to take shots. Aperture was kept at f/22. Shutter speed varied from 1/2 to 1.5 seconds.

Kadambi Waterfall

When we need photograph waterfall you need to understand that water can be photographed in two ways. One using fast shutter speed which freezes water droplets make the waterfall looks like that it is suddenly frozen. Better way to photograph a waterfall is to use slow shutter speed. The key to getting a silky water effect is to use a slow shutter speed. Balanced and diffused light is great for waterfalls because it helps bring out details in the shadows and amplify the contrast. The best diffused light occurs on overcast days (the clouds act as natural diffusers). It is better to walk around the waterfall and explore different angles and camera positions. Shoot at an angle instead of directly in front of the falls. As it was a restricted national park and since it was raining I did not have liberty to do those. So I stuck to the common front of the waterfall picture.

Kadambi Waterfall

To get that silky water effect you see in all the waterfall photographs, you’ll need a long shutter speed. So, set the camera to Manual mode. Use a small aperture which helps you get a longer shutter and it helps keep everything in sharp focus. I recommend starting with f/16 and then going smaller if that doesn’t give you a slow enough shutter. Some photographers will tell you to always use the smallest aperture possible on your lens, but I avoid this because lenses usually lose sharpness at their smallest apertures due to diffraction.

Use the lowest ISO speed on your camera. This also helps you get a longer shutter, but it has another benefit too: lower ISO speeds will produce less noise and capture more dynamic range. Since you’ll be using a long shutter speed, your image will be much more sensitive to noise, so a low ISO will help prevent that noise. Start with a shutter speed of a few seconds. When photographing waterfalls, finding the right shutter speed involves a lot of experimentation, but a speed of 2 seconds is usually a good place to start. Be prepared to use shutter speeds ranging from 1 to 30 seconds. Unfortunately since I could not use my tripod I used relatively faster shutter speed of 1 second.

Kadambi Waterfall Fast shutter speed

Common mistake is to use faster shutter speed. Just to show you what happens I used a commonly used shutter speed of 1/90th of a second in this last shot before I ran to cover to escape from the rain. See the water droplets which are frozen and falls does not look as silky as it should. I plan to go there again once rains are reduced so that I can get the really long exposure and the subsequent really silky effects.

Plain Prinia Feeding on Caterpillar

I was trying to photograph an Inchworm moth caterpillar sitting on a blade of grass. Breeze was blowing the grass blade so much that I was unable to focus correctly. I wanted the breeze to subside so that I could get the caterpillar in good focus. As I got up to explore other photographic opportunity nearby in that area, corner of my eye caught a curious small bird hopping behind my back. What I saw was the Plain Prinia (Prinia inornata). The bird was watching me focusing on the caterpillar. As soon as I got away it jumped on the blade of grass and plucked that caterpillar, flew to a nearest termite ridden bamboo post. Sitting on that post bird started to eat the caterpillar.

I was shocked with the sudden turn of events. My subject was being eaten in front of my very own eyes. But that turn of events by itself was a good photo opportunity. I was on that day using my usual rig for closeup photography consisting of Canon EOS 1D Mark IV fitted with Canon EF 300mm f/2.8L IS USM with Canon EF 1.4x III Extender. This rig had another advantage that it was perfectly suitable for photographing birds too. So my dual purpose setup came very handy as I had only seconds to focus on the bird and take picture before the caterpillar vanished into the beak of the bird. As you can see I didn’t even had time to change my aperture which was at f/10 as everything happened so sudden.

Inchworm Moth Caterpillar

As I clicked away a feeling of guilt came over me as I was feeling that it was me, who is responsible for the death of caterpillar. If I had not stalked that caterpillar, bird would not have found it. Inadvertently I have been responsible for the death of the caterpillar. Many a times consequences of our action will result in harm even if we do not intend to. That lead me to other thoughts of how photographer due to their actions affect their subjects and surroundings.

I want to go through few of the ethical dilemma faced by nature photographers. When we photograph we might influence our surrounding. It should be in such a way that it does not harm the nature. What commonly comes to mind is the nest photography indulged by several bird photographers. I have seen crows watching these photographers, which later attack those very nests which were being photographed. Several photographers denude the nest so that chicks are visible without any obstruction for their photography. This blows away the natural camouflage created by the chick’s parents and exposes them to predators. Handling young chicks will surely jeopardize their life. Using harsh flash very close to young ones will surely cause harm to their eyes.

Plain Prinia Feeding on Caterpillar

I have seen many insect photographers who catch their subjects and put them in refrigerators so that their activity slows down and insects become immobile. These are all unethical practices which needs to be condemned. Baiting animals which habituates these animals to artificial human food is another unethical practice. Using sound as bait (done mainly in bird photography) is likely to cause unnecessary stress if done for very long.

Photographing in a zoo takes the ‘wild’ out of ‘wildlife photography’. If you shoot captive animals label your photograph that they are taken in captivity. There is vast difference in the photograph where photographer spent weeks sleeping rough in a mosquito-infested forest to get the shot, or merely an afternoon stroll at the local safari park.

Plain Prinia Feeding on Caterpillar

Modern digital photography allows easy manipulation of photograph. Last week someone asked me this question that is relevant to all the modern day photographers. He asked me “when we have such great tools like Adobe Photoshop to manipulate photos as we want, why spend lot of effort get photograph right in the camera?” Photographers have been manipulating their images right the earliest days of their art. The first recorded case of photo manipulation was in the early 1860s, when a photo of Abraham Lincoln was altered using the body from a portrait of John C. Calhoun and the head of Lincoln from a famous seated portrait by Mathew Brady – the same portrait which was the basis for the original Lincoln Five-dollar bill.

People have attempted to pass off heavily manipulated images as genuine. At the very least these photographers could admit that their pictures have been faked by disclosing in the captions that they are digital art and not authentic photographs. But they don’t. The camera itself may never lie but, sadly, some photographers do. Creative computer skills can produce quite beautiful results. And one might also argue that photography is an art, after all, so its aim should be to make pictures as appealing and eye-catching as possible. I do not manipulate any of my photos. My post processing only involves regular raw conversion with brightness, contrast enhancement, sharpness and cropping along with noise removal as these are all necessary steps for any raw file which needs to be processed properly. I try my best to get maximum result out of the camera during shooting itself than achieving it in post production.

Plain Prinia Feeding on Caterpillar

These deceitful photographers steal the trust that should be inherent in wildlife images. Once fake photographs have shaken your confidence, you begin to doubt everything you see. Digitally manipulated images raise the bar in wildlife photography to an unnaturally high level. Sooner or later the photographers will get caught manipulating their images. Lincoln’s photograph I mentioned earlier was discovered as fake due to Lincoln’s famous mole. The trickery which was attributed to Thomas Hicks, the President’s famous mole would appear on the wrong side of his face. It was only years later that Stefan Lorant, the art director for the London Picture Post magazine, noticed that the photo was a fake.

Plain Prinia Feeding on Caterpillar

I think as nature photographers we should adhere to a certain Code of Ethics. Here is what I practice.

• View wildlife from a safe distance for both you and them. Respect and maintain their space. If the animal interrupts its behavior (resting, feeding, etc.), then you are too close and must distance yourself.
• Never force an action. Be patient! The most beautiful photographs result from natural action.
• Never come between a parent and its offspring.
• Never crowd, pursue, prevent escape, make deliberate noises to distract, startle or harass wildlife.
• Never feed or leave food (baiting) for wildlife. Habituation due to handouts can result in disease or even death of that animal and injury to you.
• Never encroach on nests or dens as certain species will abandon their young.
• Never interfere with animals engaged in breeding, nesting, or caring for young.
• Learn to recognize wildlife alarm signals and never forget that these animals are wild no matter how docile or cuddly they appear.
• Do not damage or remove any plant, life form or natural object. Do not litter and pack your trash for safe disposal elsewhere.
• Acquaint yourself with and respect the behaviors and ecosystems of the wildlife you may encounter.
• Remember that the welfare of the subject and habitat are irrefutably more important than the photograph.

Plain Prinia Feeding on Caterpillar

Here is an Ethics Declaration for wildlife photographers which has been formulated by WildPhotos in 2010. Read it and sign up at the WildPhotos Ethics Declaration website as I have done.