A Trip to Vedanthangal
Last weekend myself with Senthil Raja, Arun, Prathap, J Prakash went to Vedanthangal. Actually we planned to Vandalur zoo, but, I saw in some TV Channel a day back that Vedanthangal 's season is going to end, so extended the route to see the birds. Vedanthangal is around 80 kilometers from Chennai / Madras (from thiruvanmiyur). We started here at around 2 pm, and reached there by 3:30 pm in bikes.
Vedanthangal, one of India's largest bird sanctuary, spreads around 75 acres of water & a bit land, which is a bushy with trees, ideal for birds to nest. Water mold covers most of the water surface, so the unclosed area is full of fishes & toads. We saw many birds, and none of us are bird watcher so we don't know the name, but we saw many birds with long-bills.
But, the main problem we faced was, we had nothing to zoom, even we neither had binocular nor SLR cameras. There was small 50 meter outpost-kinda building, which had a binocular which is zoomed to particular area & was given 15 seconds by the sanctuary people to the visitors watch. But there were many foreigners with big sized SLRs & binoculars, enjoying!!!
My new camera Canon Powershot A610 was used to take the above snaps. And the time was around 3:30 it was bright sunny, so every object illuminates...
Update : Just today, (08-Feb-2006), I saw in Sun TV about Vedanthangal and it was good to see, the birds closely. Even some birds where feeding their young ones. and some with Eggs. So, go with a binocular or a SLR camera.
Update : Now you can rent a binocular in Vedanthangal!! That too for Rs 10 / hour.