Wednesday 13 February 2013

Velavadar


Velavadar National Park is bisected by the main road effectively making for two almost equal parts. One is a n immense grassland with a few man-made water holes and the other has a huge lake where a lot of water birds are to be found amidst... what else, grassland of course! Both the areas are wonderful as far as sightings go.

My post on the birds of Velavadar is here.

‘Blackbuck National Park’ at Velavadar really lives up to its name... the place is literally overrun with Blackbucks. Some of their herds must be numbering many many hundreds even over a thousand I think! The antics of the kids kept us in stitches... the males so full of themselves and spoiling for a game of sparring were very quick to lock antlers and the females just ignored all this machismo with utter disdain!!

The other regular and populous inhabitant of this park is the ‘Neel Gai’ which is Asia’s largest antelope. More decorous than the bucks, the dark grey males mostly band together and the females bring up the calves together... separately.

The first evening itself yielded the jungle cat which was on top of our radar for the place... In fact, not just one, we happened on two separate individuals, one in each part! Early the next morning gave us immediate views of the wolf...

Now that that was out of the way, we thought that a hyena sighting would complete the MUST SEE list of this place. Unfortunately, that was not to be and all three safaris we undertook there were fruitless as far as the hyenas are concerned. All the same, we were a happy bunch as we bid adieu to one of the finest grassland ecosystems we have seen in India. Some of the images from there....



Black buck male

Jungle cat

Female Black buck

Neel gai with calf

Indian grey wolf


Practice!!


Neel Gai or the Blue Bull

The female

Frolicking around!!

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