One monsoon morning, I decided to go to a popular birding location on the outskirts of Bangalore called Hesserghatta. On reaching there I realized that the monsoon rains over the last month had converted the grasslands into treacherous off roading tracks and my vehicle was going to be surely tested in these conditions! Hesserghatta is a good birding site during winters because you find quite a few migrants there. However during monsoons, there are just a few resident species like the Lark, Kite and Grey Francolin around.
Given the slippery conditions, I was more concerned about navigating my vehicle to ensure that I did not get stuck in the sticky clay soil of the lake bed. Somewhere along the way we found a relatively dry track and as we were ambling along it, I spotted a couple of Grey Francolin forging nearby. I cautiously and slowly drove the vehicle to get as close to the birds as possibile without spooking them. But unfortunately they noticed us and sprinted for cover in the tall grass nearby. I then drove the vehicle in such a way that at no point we were going directly in the direction of the birds, but were using a zig-zag approach to cover the distance between us and the birds. This technique seemed to help since the Grey Francolin allowed us to get close to a point where I could get frame filling closeup compositions.
