Since David Frye, of Detroit, Michigan, had contacted Chandu to go to Hoskote, Thomas, his son Aakash, and I also joined in from south Bangalore.

We crossed the K R Puram bridge as dawn was breaking:

This palm tree was bouncing an orange ball as we reached the lake:

The lake was a mirror: There were an amazing number of swallows on the "bund" or the shore of the lake. Here's my short video of the surfeit of swallows: Here are two, preening: They sat on the dried-up trees in the lake, too: David Frye and Chandu arrived as we were observing the birds: I was very impressed with his sketching and documentation: Here's our little group against the morning sun: L to R: Chandu, David, Vignesh( who also arrived at the same time), Thomas, and Aakash. On the lake bed, we found an ex-crab: We consulted to get id's.... Especially one bird that was a lifer for me, the COMMON GREENSHANK: Meanwhile, Sanjeev Managoli also drove up on his way to his teaching duties, and in his car, I saw this delightful Ganesha, with a laptop and a mouse: We took a brefus break, and here are all of us: And here's IVC (Iddli, Vada, Coffee!) Suvarchala, Chandu's wife, had made these delicious gulab jamuns, so we ate them, too:

For more bird photos,

click here

to go to my FaceBook album of photos taken with the Sony,

and

click here

to go to my FaceBook album of photos taken with the Canon 30D.

I’ll add some photos from the 30D after I upload them to Flickr!