India update #2, Bandhavgarh & Kanha Nat'l Parks

I joined the Clemson Students for their tours of these two amazing National Parks!
This was my second visit to the same parks I came to 5 years ago, but they looked totally different to me. There have been lots of changes in Park Management, using fire more as a management tool and cutting the tiger grass in the fields.

I will start with my field observations then get into the education program in the next blog:
I only got to see one tiger at each park, a rare occurrence that so few tigers were sighted at BOTH parks. The tiger sightings were scarce but some people were more lucky with other sightings too, like Dhole, Jungle Cats, Leopards, jackals, mongoose, and lots of other bird species as well! But we got to see the usual list of characters - the animals on the lower part of the food chain - the vegetarians!
Enjoy!

I will post these photos first - my Tiger photos aren't great so I will borrow some from others that were on the trip with us.

Gaur

Silly Gaur face!

Sambar deer battling during mating season.

A Cute Baby Languar monkey eating lunch.

The BIRDS: Hoopoe with that wild crazy hair!

A week old Cheetal baby

Adult Cheetal keep their spots, so they are called spotted deer as well. So cute!

A full moon - we celebrated the spring time with a harvest dance with local villagers! I will post videos eventually.

This Sambar was not shy~

It was eating along the road side.

Perhaps a serpent eagle? There were many species of raptors that caught our attention~more videos on that later!

Grey Hornbills were very common but very hard to get a photo of, so these shots were lucky ones!

A King vulture has a nice view of his kingdom -he rules from above. There were three different kinds of vultures cultures, King, Egyptian and I will look this up later!

This peacock may have been trying to dry his tail feathers after the rain.

A peacock looking for some tasty treats in the grass. It's really amazing to see them take flight with that Long long tail! They roost in the trees where nothing can attack them.

Peahens - females on the lookout for some long tail feathers!

This is the original chicken! Red Jungle Fowl and they also have a spurfowl but I only got a glimpse of them.

The tiger photos are coming up - there is video I will post soon as well! Stay tuned!