Overcast birding at Hosaadu

17th October 2021

Overcast days are painful for birding especially when it is mixed with haze. This beautiful village is filled with nature & birds, but the overcast weather keeping things dark. We had few rituals at in-laws house and once concluded, I went for short stroll to grab some bird. My primary intention was to capture Loten's sunbird clearly but I could not get fine picture due to overcast skies.

Bit of rain followed by overcast skies. The fence after the nearby paddy field was abuzz with green bee-eaters. It is quite common to spot them here at eye level. But the poor sunlight spoiled everything. My 10yr old camera cannot match to the darkness with unusable image at ISO800. Here are bee-eaters for record.

I have been watching the paddyfield pipits in hosaadu quite frequently. This pipit was perched on the fencing pole for a while cleaning its wet body after rains. I started capturing it from distance which was not good image in darkness. Gradually I neared the bird and started shooting. Even though bird got confused with shutter sound, it did not take things seriously. Later I moved quite close and snapped good images but still not crisp. That's the max I could get under overcast skies with ISO 800. Hope to captured them clearly during sunlight. Their plumage equating with mature/harvested paddy field is difficult for colour reproduction.

Here is notional thought of bird when it heard shutter sound for fun!

What was that, looks some bird noise.

Nothing behind though!

What was that again, did it come from behind or downwards. Is it new species?

Later the bird flew away spotting me but by that time I had many in frame. Still not great pictures as predicted due to poor light

It started to get dark again and I was feeling drowsy. On the way back, this white throated kingfisher was graceful enough to stay steady despite being closer. I got some fluffy picture of this bird even in overcast sky. The bird did see my movement but perhaps knew that I am harmless. Even though light was poor, the proximity exposed great details of bird. I am sharing all of them to thank the bird for understanding my intention :-)

Check out my Bird Series blogs here : NKBirdSeries