5 Things to Do in Lalbagh

Lalbagh being in the center of the City, it is quite accessible and always crowded. Even Government is trying to increase the ticket costs and the current cost is:

1. Person Entry : 10 Rs.

2. Camera Entry: 50 Rs.

No fees, before 9 AM and after 6 PM. Camera case is quite ambiguous before 9 AM and after 6 PM.

Now, what to do in Lalbagh. First of all, its a botanical garden and if you are not interested in plants, trees, lakes, birds, flowers, its merely a place to sit and talk.

1. Enjoy Flowers. It has a rose garden and other flowers like Dahlia, Cosmos will be available in the summers.

You can enjoy some of the blogs on flowers day.

Pink Rose

White Rose in Lalbagh

Red Rose in Lalbagh

Pink Rose collection in Lalbagh

Flowers at Lalbagh

2. Enjoy Hunting – Its a very rich place with lot of fishes. So, you can often see a good killing/hunting scene around it. Snakes, Pelicans, Kites, Cormorants are often can be seen in action.

Checkered keelback water snake with a Kill at Lalbagh

Checkered keelback water snake with a Kill at Lalbagh

Keelback Snake gulping a big fish at Lalbagh

3. Enjoy Birding:

A Spot-billed Pelican flying

Pond Heron with a kill

4. Enjoy Nature/Photo shoot – Its a great place to witness sunrise, sunset and the transformed clouds. Provides all kind of background for good photo shoot.

Sunset in Lalbagh

A beautiful view of the lake

5. Butterflies – If you are interested in shooting butterflies or gaining knowledge about it. Great place again !!

Common Yellow Grass on Dahlia

Green Tailed Jay on Dahlia flower

Have Fun, Do Visit. Highest no. of people use it for running/jogging/walking and worth a place to do exercise. It provide one of the coolest stretch to do so.

Do, drop us your comments and anytime you want to join us for Lalbagh trail.

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Winter started and some bird at Lalbagh

Probably 3rd-4th time, I mentioned that winter started and so winter migrant birds too. In Lalbagh, we were able to witness some of the migrants today. Whereas after a long time, I saw Pelican back at Lalbagh. Some pictures here and there.

Spotted Billed Pelican - Glup the fish

Female Shikra

Adjusting the position of flsh 🙂

Asian Brown Flycatcher

Cormorant speeding up

Ashy Drongo

Domestic Ducks

Tiger kind of move by Common Kite

Great tit

Male shrika escape

Birds and flowers again – Lalbagh

Some snaps from Lalbagh..

Bar headed Goose and Little Egret

I guess so, this is called Bar headed Goose only.

Spotted Owlet

We find him in such a way, that he got angry.. I never wanted to make a bird angry.

Bangalore is getting hotter - Black kites queued up for water

I never seen many kites sitting at same place, most of the time they keep on flying or sit alone. But here they queued up for water. Off-course a prey will make the water more tasty :).

White throated Kingfisher

Black kite again - normal pose

Finding a small bird like Common Tailorbird is always nice :).

Common Tailorbird

Little cormorant in its typical wing open style.

Little Cormorants

And then fight for ashy/black drongo. Initially I thought its black one, but it came out ashy in viewing from camera.

Ashy Drongo

A beautiful summer flower, I don’t know the name.

Summer flower

And then jungle myna – deadly eyes :).

Jungle Myna

Its still indeed one of my best places for bird watching. Though we have seen a reduction in bird as the time for winter birds to move away.

News from Lalbagh

Second Sunday is dedicated for Lalbagh, which is one of the biggest prides of Bangalore. Glad to know that we were able to spot new birds at this place. I have been lalbagh so many times and every time it come as a surprise. Enjoy some of them 🙂 :

verditer flycatcher male

verditer flycatcher female

So One of us shared story about this verditer flycatcher. 3 yrs ago, it was been sighted but in last 2 years we had not seen that bird in Lalbagh, probably because of some tree cut, they have shifted there place.

golden oriole

grey headed starling

Grey Headed Strarling was also our first time sight. Love to see Golden Oriole too. I have spotted this bird three days back near by Home.

black drongo

brahminy kite

We left in the half itself, while coming back. We have spotted Brahminy Kite sitting on a tree. The pattern at neck was so lovely, that we have taken our camera back from the bag.

Great tit

Rose ringed Parakeet

white cheeked Barbet

Asian Koel Female

Spotted dove

Asian Koel Male

Lake Views in Bangalore

Bangalore is also a City of Lakes. I have never seen or heard about a city in India with so many lakes in and around the city. Here is a photowalk through few of the lakes that we have explored.

BTM/Madivala Lake:

Right amidst the hustle bustle of the city is one of the biggest freshwater lake in Bangalore – Madivala Lake or BTM Lake. Named on the area where it is situated i.e BTM Layout, this lake is a home of the winter migratory bird Spot billed Pelicans. You can spot them in huge numbers here apart from other birds like Pond Heron, Egret and Purple Swamphens. But the lake is not in a very good condition as it is filled with weeds and a pile of them stinking on the sides of the lake. The lake has an adjoining park good for a morning stroll or an evening walk or just sitting beside  the lake.

View of BTM/Madiwala Lake at evening

Hebbal Lake :

View of Hebbal Lake in the morning

Hebbal Lake is more of a bird sanctuary for photographers and bird watchers. A nice place to be in the morning where you can hear the birds chirping, enjoy the sunrise view and capture the beauty of the colourful flowers with insects and bees buzzing on them.

 

Sunrise View at Hebbal Lake

Hesaraghatta Lake:

Another man made fresh water lake in north west Bangalore. Its actually a dam with walls on one side of the lake. This lake with a beautiful view has lots of beautiful Brahminy Kites soaring in the sky. As you walk along side the lake, you can enter a small forest with lots of greenery and birds.

View of Hesaraghatta Lake in the morning

Jigani Lake:

View of Jigani Lake in the morning

On the outskirts of  the city through Bannerghatta area inside a village is a beautiful lake “Jigani Lake”. A nature walk at an early morning is a good activity at this big tank. But the lake is in danger. Though the lake looks clean, the sides of the lake has garbage dumped which gives a very stinking smell. With so many birds at the beautiful place, soon we might not be able to see any birds here if the effects of urbanization reaches here.

LalBagh Lake:

One of the biggest botanical garden in the heart of the city, Lalbagh Botanical Garden, is one of the most famous in Karnataka. This garden is making the city green inspite of being in the main city withstanding all the pollution and making a great home for the flora and fauna. The garden has a big lake where you get to spot lots of different breeds of ducks apart from the cormorants, spot-billed pelicans and other birds.

Lalbagh Lake with ducks

Lalbagh Lake View with Flying Pelicans

Manchanebele Dam:

Around 40 kms from Bangalore towards Mysore Road is the beautiful Manchanabele Dam. On the way to the dam are villages , trees lined up on both sides of the road, the famous big Banyan tree which leads you to the scenic beauty of the place. Around the dam you can walk through a mini forest like where you can spot different variety of birds. Still untouched by the city pollution this place is a nice picnic spot.

 

View of Manchanabele Dam

Rampura Lake:

The dirtiest lake , infact not a lake any more – Rampura Lake. This lake has turned into a sewage dump. No sooner this lake will disappear like few other lakes of Bangalore.

 

Rampura Lake

Bheeman Kuppa Lake:

Another lake through Mysore Highway, has a wet area land around which has lots of birds around. The road through the village giving a nice sunrise view leads to this lake which is surrounded by lots of trees.

View of Bheeman Kuppa Lake

It’s not over – Lalbagh Trip

Ah to start with, I always had a question in mind, why Lalbagh is such an appreciated place in Bangalore !! But in this post, we will show you some of the cool varieties of bird that we spotted at Lalbagh(A big thanks for bngbirds group – this group has set of expert who … who believe that birds are the loveliest thing exist 🙂 ).

So, who don’t like to see the pair of pelican graciously flying, cormorant dancing in team and the kite chased by crow.

Crow chasing the kite

Pelican Pair flying graciously

Moving further, we met our lovely White throated Kingfisher and a pond heron trying to hide herself from camera.

White throated Kingfisher

Pond Heron hiding from camera

We have waited long to see the Pelican take off and water drops with her. But again, we were not able to make it a perfect shot. We saw a white breasted Cormorant sitting on the top of a tree.

Spot Billed Pelican

White Breasted Cormorant

Just next to next day, we meet bngbirds group at Lalbagh and we did again an awesome round of photography. Its fascinating to see Owl staring at you and Oriole enjoying the sun light.

Duck	Spotted Owlet staring

It was my first time to see Spotted Owl, Grey Heron and Ashy Drongo.

Golden Oriole Male.

Grey Heron

Rose Ringed Parakeet.

Ashy Drongo

Ah Kite, I always love this bird. Such a high potential bird. Brahminy kite and Black Kite falls into the category of “Birds of Prey”, who do most of their hunting from sharp vision and highly optimistic at the time of hunting.

Brahminy kite

Pied WagTail

Egret

Cormorants enjoying the eve

Brahminy Kite in Action

Black Kite

Then suddenly we spotted a lazy female Asian Koel. We confirmed it with Deepa and she said yes,Female Koel is a lazy bird. Sushil, Priyanka and I was discussing that from childhood we knew that Koel is black in color but it is not(Male Koel is indeed black in color). We have spotted White cheeked Barbet second time, first was in Hebbal Lake.

Asian Koel(Female)

White cheeked Barbet

Rose Ringed Parakeets

Rose Ringed Parakeet - Giving shot 🙂