Dusky Moorhen

A moor is a marshy area generally abounding in peat. An appropriate name for a moorhen. I was presently surprised to spot a family of Dusky moorhens (Gallinula tenebrosa ) , the adult taking a little one on a exploration trip. It was a beautiful experience to see the little chick take its baby steps and trying to emulate its mother. The bird is similar to the Purple moorhen found in India and when I first saw the bird from a distance, I even blurted out calling it Purple moorhen- until I remembered that I was in another continent.

Common Moorhen

Nearly a Year ago I had a Post on Purple Moorhen this one is the Common Moorhen (Gallinula chloropus). Although this is a common bird in India, this one was photographed in London. Here in India the bird rarely comes out in the open like this and is very happy to be within reeds of marshes. Since this bird is distributed nearly all around the globe, its name too has been varied.
Its walk seems like a sulking one but is very elegant when in water.
Feeds on worms, mollusks , insects ,grains and certain marsh plants.

Both the photographs were shot with spot metering , although for the first one matrix metering too would have done a commendable job. Matrix metering works well most of the times, especially when there are varying tones in one frame. But when concerned with a small area of the frame, or when shooting dark images in bright background, centre averaged or spot metering works best. Though I find that with Spot metring, one needs to click lots of photographs metered at various points on the frame.

Purple Moorhen

So far I have been Pretty irregular with my blog posts and I have decided to change this now. For the next 2 months at least I will be regularly posting at a frequency of 3-4 posts per week.
This hen sized clumsy bird has a purplish body with red legs and toes. I photographed this bird at Lalbagh lake in Bangalore.
A Purple Moorhen spends a lot of time within a vegetation consisting of marshy reeds and overgrown rushes and could be hard to spot; the first indication of this bird will be its bobbing head within the vegetation. During courtship the male holds water weeds in its beak and bows to the female with loud chuckles. The bird feeds on vegetable matter, shoots, insects and mollusks.
Found all over the subcontinent.
sony h-7; f/4.5 , 1/250 sec, ISO-80