Toothpick Treepie

Wish you all a very happy Republic Day, on this valuable day let us take the oath to save our wilderness and keep our Country clean. Cleanliness and conservation of wilderness is the need of the hour if we do not take a step now the next generation will face a lot of trouble in future. 

I know you must be wondering with title name, as I have promised to deliver something unique I am bringing you absolutely unheard fact of the most ignored bird. I know now eagerness is going high 😃 so let me take you to the next section to disclose the suspense.

Tiger toothpick – Treepie 

Considering your eagerness I will disclose the suspense without getting into the details that I will take you through in the next section. 

Let me check if you know this, do you know Treepie is known as Tiger Bird and Tiger Toothpick? Yes, Treepie is famous for its habit because of which it is named as tiger bird/Tiger Toothpick. Now let me tell you the reason as well. Treepie got its name as the tiger toothpick because it cleans the tiger’s teeth of meat between meals. I know it is very difficult to believe but it is 200% fact as well. Such sighting is not that easy plus rarest of the rare to capture it to have it on record but surely it is confirmed by the forest guides who visit frequently to the forest and lucky to notice such absolutely unbelievable movement. Another reason to co-relate the bird with a tiger is because of close match of its color and habit of Treepie to eat leftover of kill done by the Tigers. the pattern of color and scheme of color is very close to Tiger instead of the crow family. I know it is hard to believe but trust me once you visit forest you will surely agree with me. To help you identify this bird in the wilderness let me help you with some fantastic facts about this bird.   

Facts file

Now let us see some fantastic details of this ignored bird, instead, let us make this bird as the most photogenic bird. Trust me this bird is capable of giving fantastic frames

One more surprise, Rufous treepie is a member of the crow family and a colorful cousin of the black and white Eurasian magpie. I am sure you would have not imagined that this bird is a member of the crow family

Treepie a native to Indian subcontinent known for its long tail, color, and loud musical calls

The main color of the body is cinnamon with a black head and the long graduated tail is bluish grey and is tipped in black whereas the wing has a white patch

The rufous treepie is an arboreal omnivore feeding almost completely in trees on fruits, seeds, invertebrates, small reptiles and the eggs and young of birds; it has also been known to take flesh from recently killed carcasses

The local name of Rufous treepie is Bhera, Mahtab, Mootri

They have a wide repertoire of calls, some harsh and guttural, others quite melodious. The term bob-o-link is a more or less faithful syllabification of one of their pleasanter calls

They also hunt systematically for birds’ nests and are highly destructive to the eggs and young of the smaller species

I am sure you liked the details shared for a bird that is ignored most of the time, do visit photoshop to see the color of this lovely bird. After reading this I am sure you will always remember this bird and recognize it when you visit the forest, do share your story and pictures when you take wilderness tour (btwildart@gmail.com)

A Message of the Day 

Save Wildlife. Save Earth. 

God loved the birds and created trees, humans loved the birds and created cages. Let them enjoy freedom, don’t create cage life for birds.

Author:

BT Wild Art –

Life is Safari. Enjoy it.

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Small Creature - Mongoose

Hello buddies, hope 2019 is going rocking for all of you, make a promise that at least one wildlife visit you will do in this year. Let this year be of wilderness, we need to save our wildlife at any cost to ensure our coming generation stay healthy with an appropriate environment.

My Saturday/Sunday challenge is always to finalize the topic, today, when I looked at my portfolio one of the pictures took me to the childhood days, it reminded me of a story which I used to heard many times or maybe we must have seen on television. Guess what it was the story of Snake and Mongoose, Saap Nevle ki ladai. This memory forced me to write on Mongoose to take you to memory lane as well. I am sure all of us are aware of the story of a mongoose but not aware of the quality of this litter creature so let me move to the next section to provide you with unique information.

Something Unique

Mongoose is the popular English name for 29 of the 34 species in the 14 genera of the family Herpestidae, which are small feliform carnivorans native to southern Eurasia and mainland Africa. The other five species (all African) in the family are the four kusimanses in the genus Crossarchus, and the species Suricata suricatta commonly called meerkat in English.

The word "mongoose" is likely derived from the Marathi name muṅgūs pronounced as mʊŋɡuːs and ultimately from the Telugu name muṅgisa or Kannada muṅgisi.

They are adept at such tasks due to their agility, thick coats, and specialized acetylcholine receptors, which make it not fully immune, but relatively tolerant of cobra venom. Mongooses are one of four known mammalian species with mutations in the nicotinic acetylcholine receptor that protect against snake venom. Pigs, honey badgers, hedgehogs, and mongooses all have modifications to the receptor pocket that prevents the snake venom α-neurotoxin from binding.

Isn’t it unique? Of course, it is, I am sure no one is aware of such a unique ability of small wonder. This is how Mongoose can tackle poisonous snakes, let see some other facts of a little one.

Interesting facts about mongooses

The mongoose is a small animal but an excellent hunter, with keen senses of smell, sight and hearing, and remarkable reflexes

Mongooses are generally terrestrial mammals, but some are semi-aquatic, and others are at home in the treetops

Mongooses live from 6 to 10 years in the wild and up to 20 years in captivity

The smallest mongoose is a common dwarf mongoose. It grows from 18 to 28 centimeters in length and weighs 210 to 350 grams. While the largest mongoose is a white-tailed mongoose, it has a head-and-body length of 53–71 centimeters and a tail length of 40–47 centimeters and weighs about 5 kilograms

The Indian gray mongoose and others are well known for their ability to fight and kill venomous snakes, particularly cobras

Mongooses are carnivores (meat-eaters). They eat rodents, birds, frogs, insects, eggs.

I am sure you will be delighted to know unknown diary of Mongoose, do visit DSLR section to recall your memory

A Message of the Day 

Save Wildlife. Save Earth. 

Protect our wetland to keep our city pollution level intact, degradation of wilderness will create incurable problems in future

Author:

BT Wild Art –
Life is Safari. Enjoy it.

DSLR

Fishing Bird – Cormorant

Hello everyone, hope you are enjoying your weekend. So what do you want to know after city birding and Magical Cat? Even I was thinking what to offer? and then while going through portfolio I got few pictures of little bird, which is a fantastic fishing expert but mostly ignored because the focus is always on big or migratory birds hence thought to throw some lights on this lovely creature. Today’s expert bird is none other than Cormorant, I am sure you may have seen it but not at all aware about the quality of this little cute bird.

In my views, we should consider all every little bird while we are on a trip; you never know when such a common bird will give you uncommon movement. So let us move to the next section to learn things about little but cute bird Cormorant.

Art of Fishing

As I mentioned Cormorant is an expert fisher, one of the reason is kind of habitat this bird has but catching a fish is different from some of the other aquatic birds like Pond Heron or say Egret.

Before I explain details let me share my experience with Cormorants in recent time, I have been chasing cormorants on my various birding trip such as city birding, Bhigwan, Bharatpur etc. I monitored closely and got some wonderful frames out of it.

Similarly, like others, I was ignoring Cormorants but one fine day I saw Cormorant taking dip dive in water from one place and coming out from another place at a distance, this activity pulled my attention toward little bird so I continue to observe it more and leaving Flamingo behind. Cormorant did this for four to five times and came up with fish in its beak, the unique pattern was amazing to eyes, and the most attractive part of fishing was throwing fish out and catching it again before it swallows inside. I was so amazed by the unique behaviour as it gave me lovely frames. This fantastic moment taught me a lesson that even common and not so attractive bird can give you one of the best time ever. In nutshell, respect everything offered by Mother Nature, it will surely payback with unique and life capturing moments.

I know you would be wondering that how it is possible for such little small size bird to act such stunt let me update you on the support system that makes this behaviour possible. 

• Cormorants are expert divers, dive up to 4 minutes looking for food. Some types of Cormorant diving as deep as 45 meters (148 feet). They can stay underwater for more than one minute!

• Cormorants have special feathers, which allow the water to penetrate, enabling the bird to swim well under water

• The bill is long, thin and sharply hooked. Their feet have webbing between all four toes, which helps to manage dive. They speed along underwater via their webbed feet, using their wings as rudders

• Cormorants have short wings for a flying bird due to their need to swim. Because of this, they have the highest flight cost of any flying bird

• They dive from the surface, though many species make a characteristic half-jump as they dive, presumably to give themselves a more streamlined entry into the water

Now we learn the diving strategy of Cormorants, let us dive into the other important details to complete the journey of God's lovely creature.

Fantastic Facts

Cormorants are a species of aquatic birds, sometimes known as “shags.” They belong to the Phalacrocoracidae family of birds. Cormorant colonies can have up to 4,000 members. Many of the species will hunt together

Cormorants are usually black, brown, or greyish. During the mating season, some cormorants develop brilliant white or blue patches on their throats or thighs

Cormorants build nests on rocky crags to protect their babies. Sometimes they use old blue heron nests high in trees

Cormorant mothers and fathers take turns sitting on their eggs. Once the babies are born, their parents feed them half-eaten fish

Do you know why Cormorants spread their wings out in the sun? Some scientists believe cormorants don’t have protective oil in their feathers like other waterfowl. They might be drying their feathers

Some species of cormorant include: the double-breasted cormorant, little black cormorant, Indian Cormorant, European shag, rock shag, Bounty shag, Japanese cormorant, Auckland shag, Cape cormorant, crowned cormorant, Crozet shag, and the Georgia shag

Cormorant colonies can have up to 4,000 members. Many of the species will hunt together

I hope you will surely capture Cormorants on your next wilderness trip, do capture them in different activities, and co-relate them with things I have explained here. While ending the blog leaving you with some lovely pictures in Deadly DSLR section

A Message of the Day 

Save Wetlands. Save Earth

Protect our wetland to keep our city pollution level intact, degradation of wilderness will create incurable problems in future

Author:

BT Wild Art –

Life is Safari. Enjoy it.

Deadly DSLR

Sensational Serval

Wish you all a very and prosperous new year, hope the New Year brings a lot of happiness and wilderness in our life. Today is the first blog of this year hence the topic should be special so decided to bring one of the rarely sighted species for you, the color and walking style of this lovely cat makes it one of the best from the cat family. The experience of Masai will always be remembered in books of heart forever because to sight this cat you need to be extremely lucky.

Since we have already felt the experience of Seval with one of the most liked blog “Asante Sana Kenya – Not only Big Five”, today I will update you on the uniqueness of this cat, if you have missed the blog you may click here to read the same. 

https://btwildart.blogspot.com/2018/09/asante-sana-kenya-not-only-big-five.html 

Sensational Serval

The Serval is Sensational because when you see it for the first time you will confuse and recognize it as Leopard or Cheetah but it is not. Serval Cat is a wild cat native to Africa

Serval is magical because of longest legs than any cat relative to its body size; hind legs are longer than its front ones

Serval is magical its ears are the largest of any cat in comparison to its body size

Classic hunting quality is another reason to make it sensational animal, Servals are very successful hunters - they catch 50% of their prey. Other cat species have only a 10% success rate, they can even catch flying birds

The Ancient Egyptians used to worship Servals for their grace and power

Because of these qualities, Serval is the most attractive cat but rare as well, you can find this lovely animal near Central & South Africa, after reading unique quality let us move to facts file to understand the nature and habitat of one the most attractive creature

Facts File

Small head, large ears with a golden-yellow to buff coat spotted and striped with black and a short black-tipped tail characterize the Serval. Each Serval is unique; there are no two servals with the same marks on their fur

Servals are carnivores – they prey on rodents (particularly vlei rats), small birds, frogs, insects, and reptiles

Serval's ears serve as radars that easily recognize sound produced by moving animal (even when they are moving in the underground tunnels). Excellent sense of smell, hearing and eve sight helps Serval to find prey and avoid predators

Servals are solitary animals, which gather only during mating season. They use urine and scratching of the trees to mark their territory, which is usually 12-20 square kilometers large

The Serval prefers areas with covers such as reeds and tall grasses and proximity to water bodies, such as wetlands and savannahs

What super qualities and facts this lovely animal is in possession, part of the Cat family but leaving them behind with sharp hearing and excellent hunting qualities. Trust me it is attractive to our eyes as well. The long leg, the color, the eyes topping it to walking style is nothing less than a rockstar

Do visit the DSLR section to meet this super sweet cat. Keep reading, keep liking and keep blessing your favorite blog

A Message of the Day

Save Wildlife, save Earth: Protect our forest and wetland to keep pollution in control, degradation of wilderness will create incurable problems in future

Author:BT Wild Art –
Life is Safari. Enjoy it.

DSLR section