Before I start into the details of this post, for those who are not aware of what a "Brahminy Kite" is, let me explain it not a name of some girl or a famous menu item for that matter. Brahminy Kite is the name of a bird specie which is very commonly observed in lot of places in and around city. It comes from a general family of Kites and is a resident bird of India. As a reference I am adding below a photo which is one of the few that I have listed further.
For those who are not interested in a small story about how I ended up clicking Brahminy Kite in flight photos you can directly jump through below three paras.
The very first time when I saw this bird from a close distance was when it had attacked me. The story goes like I had gone on my room terrace to click some of flying pigeon photos when suddenly I saw this huge thing flying on top of my head for sometime and the next thing I remember was a blow of air that went pass my left ear. It was at this time that I realized I was under a furious attack and started running for cover. Fortunately that was not a very bad day for me. Gasping for my breathe I went down to my room and was trying to recollect what exactly went wrong.
This whole incident left me quite curious about how can I shoot such a fast moving object (especially a bird) with my camera? and it was this curiosity that urged me to take some clicks of flying Brahminy Kite. I started my quest by once again trying to get on top of my room terrace. But after few failed attempts I realized that I had a better chance of clicking photos of the attacking Kite when I stood in my room's balcony. I decided to give it a try and though I was able to take some clicks but they were not really good ones. I can say they just remained to be file photos.
So to continue the story, after my failed attempts I decided to change the spot and did some rounds of various places in Pune city from where I can get a close distance and good angle shot of a flying Kite. I ended up finalizing "Balgandharv Bridge" which was close to my room. Following are the few clicks that I shot on a sunny afternoon.
Being a bird watcher I always felt that Brahminy Kites are just the another species of bird like sparrow which are so beautiful when we observe them from a close distance or from a binocular, but at the same time their presence is taken for granted just like sparrows.
I had started taking the clicks quite late around 11:00AM so I was not very sure about getting good one, but as I mentioned early in the post these are resident birds and you find quite a lot of them during the whole day. You just need to choose the correct spot.
This one just happened to came on top of my head and close to sun. Due to this I got that pristine white background.
This one had spotted something on the ground under the bridge and was trying to grab it. I was fortunate enough for this click to come in time as few of my such clicks were wasted due to wrong timing.
Few more over the head clicks. In the last one you can see the feathers properly.
In this click the Kite had just made a turn and was trying to stabilize its flight. Though this is not a best shot for such pose, but I feel good about it especially when I was using Nikon D40 with 200mm lens....:-).
Here one of these Kites managed to get hold of some food and was having it during its flight in air.
This one is the in flight attacking stance when the Kite (or any attacking bird) makes a descend towards the ground.
This is the last one in which the Kite is trying to make a in flight summer salt. This kind of move is very common when there is some fight going on for food.
Taking these clicks took me three hours. I was forced to keep my camera in bag due to the heavy sun light which made it impossible to take any more clicks. It was a fun filled and satisfying day for me.
