Jahangirnagar University, Savar, Dhaka, Bangladesh
its been a while since I've made my last visit to JU...... if I needed to see Nature within the shortest possible time, it had to be JU.... winter is the best time to see JU at its most vibrant..... the idea of going there came from my family.... my two-year old daughter Lamisa hasn't seen JU yet, so, it was the perfect opportunity to let her get close to Nature.... she has already stepped foot on the beaches of Kuakata, has sniffed the cute kaash ful, and seen the colours of endless mustard fields........
I had tested my Sigma 50-500 (BIGMA) at JU three years back..... that was the first time I got to know about the biodiversity of JU.... a first-hand account.... since then, I started to train my lens towards birds whenever the opportunity came...... I haven't done such bird photography in a while..... it was almost as if I had my finger ready on the shutter release.....
migratory ducks at JU........01
migratory ducks at JU........02
migratory ducks at JU........03
a tree-full of Asian Openbills......01
a tree-full of Asian Openbills......02
Asian Openbills basking in the afternoon sun......
Jungle Babbler...... a common resident of JU.....
White-breasted Waterhen searching the green for food.....
Magpie Robin, can't get enough of them.....
Common Snipe..... (thanks to Zamir Bhai for the ID)
Bronze-winged Jacana.......
Bronze-winged Jacana (Juvenile)......
as I was with the family, I didn't really move around..... we stuck to one big pool, where most migratory ducks concentrate..... I could easily guess that the number of birds has decreased substantially..... but locals said that the pool was even more empty last year..... this is the first time I noticed some Asian Openbills occupying one big tree.... there were around 12 of them in that empire..... I couldn't help take a walk to get a different view of the tree from the side of Al Beruni Hall..... and in the process, I located a couple of more species around that pool..... seen a couple of Common Snipes, which I previously didn't notice at the campus... White-breasted Waterhen was my first..... the pool also had a couple of Bronze-winged Jacana dancing on the floating water lily.... I saw them before at JU, but a juvenile was my first, and the different colour confused me much....
the two-plus hours' stay there was refreshing indeed..... Lamisa has never seen that many birds flying together..... its true that the campus was losing its charm fast, but the biodiversity there still exists, albeit under a lot of stress..... I though I should manage some more time later to go around the bushes..... well over 100 species of birds call this their home.... so, a day spent there would never look like a waste....
