It’s always nice to see an owl in the daytime. This little guy is called a barred jungle owlet and I spotted him/her in Bandhavgarh in India. There seems to be some confusion as to why certain smaller owls are called owlets and not owls. The best explanation seems to be obvious — they are smaller than the average owl. This owlet, in fact, wasn’t much bigger than a softball.

Here’s another of the baby hanuman langurs that were all over the place in India. This one was in Bandhavgarh National Park. Is it wrong to say he looks a bit like Michael Jackson?

Not the most attractive animals in the world, but according to the tigers in the area, quite good eatin’. This guy was photographed late in the day in Kanha National Park in India.

This was the third tiger that I saw in India. Unlike the first two that I viewed from an open air jeep, I had to get on top of an elephant to see this one. She was resting in the shade of some bushes and I couldn’t really get a good look,  but then she suddenly lifted up to scratch her chin and I was able to get this shot.

I’ve photographed quite a few jackals in Africa, mostly the black backed jackal, but also the side striped jackal. This is the Indian version, the golden jackal (although it is a very common and widespread jackal and is also found in Africa, central Europe and the Middle East). Oddly, the golden jackal is more closely related to grey wolves and coyotes than to other jackals.

With their indigo, bright blue and turquoise feathers, Indian rollers are pretty spectacular birds when in flight. Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to get a shot of one flying. I did like, however, the low angle of view I was able to get of this roller — with camera on the ground, I was able to blur out the foreground and background to really isolate the bird.

By far, the most common animal I saw in India was the spotted deer (locally known as chital). You see a lot of deer in the national parks of India, but especially spotted deer. These two young males were play fighting. The older male in the background seems to be refereeing the fight. In fact, just prior to these two going at it, he looked like he was teaching them how to fight, sparring gently with one and then the other.

I may not have had great luck with the tigers in India, but I did have very good luck with owls. On one particular evening, I went out “owling” with one of the camp managers. We were able to photograph four different species, including these Oriental scops owls. I was photographing the owl in front, and just as I was about to release the shutter, the other owl swooped in from behind and the two started mating for a few seconds before they both flew off.

Interesting tiger fact of the day: It’s not just the tiger’s fur that is striped, but the body as well. In other words, if shaved clean, you’d see that the skin is tattooed with the same stripes that occur on the fur. This is another female from Bandhavgarh National Park in Madhya Pradesh in central India.

Growing up in the United States we tend to associate peacocks with zoos, roaming uncaged throughout the premises. It was nice to see them in their natural habitat in the forests of India. They are actually quite common throughout much of India and Sri Lanka. There is another species, the green peacock, which lives in Java and Myanmar, and a third, the Congo peacock which lives in the rain forests of Africa. This one here, the blue, is the species that we see most often in zoos.