We planned to go to Cauvery Fishing camp, Bheemeshwari to get the Lesser Fish Eagle and we got some decent shots. I decided to spend the Saturday at Bheemeshwari along with my friend En Chiang. We started off from Bangalore at around 6:30 in the morning. The weather was looking good. It had rained the previous day and it was quite cool. We reached Bheemeshwari at around 9:30 and met the manager of Jungle Lodges and Resorts Mr Sunder. He arranged for a guide to send us into the forest. Harsha, who works as a naturalist in the Jungle Lodges and Resorts, along with Sunder had seen the Lesser Fish Eagle along the banks of the Cauvery.

We immediately started off into the forest along with the guide Pushparaju. He was good at tracking the birds and was also able to ID most of them. For some of the birds which we were not able to id, we referred the India Birds book, and he was very keen to know their names and used to go through the book for more information. I did manage to photograph a few birds. After around 1hr of trekking, we finally sighted the Lesser Fish Eagle. It did not have the white tail with broad black subterminal band and hence we could differentiate it from the Grey headed Fish Eagle. We missed photographing it a couple of times. Then it flew to the other bank of the river and we had to return to the camp without any luck.

later in the afternoon after lunch, we set off again into the forest, but this time on the other side of the river. Within an hour, we were greeted by the Eagle. To our surprise, there were two of them. One had caught a fish and was feeding on it. Harsha reported sighting around 4 of them and Sunder was mentioning there were more. I did manage to shoot some frames with the feed.

It was 5pm by the time we came back to the camp. We had some tea and thanked Sunder for his help and left for Bangalore. We were happy that we got what we came for. Chiang and I were still charged up as we stopped for most of the birds we sighted on the way from the camp. Suddenly we saw a fully white coloured bird sitting and preening on the electric pole. We just could not ID the bird. Then a closer look revealed that it was an Albino Babbler. Then few more babblers flew beside it. The group was that of the yellow billed Babbler. I managed to get some shots of the Albino Babbler, even though the light was poor.

It was 6:30pm by the time we hit the main Road. All along the way, till there was some light, we kept on watching for any of our feathered friends alongside.

I will update this trip report with links to photographs soon.