Naturalist Training Programme at JLR Bannerghatta Nature Camp

I’ve always liked nature and wildlife because of the early initiation to it during childhood when we would visit national parks in Karnataka almost every year. But I never bothered to take it forward and get to know more about nature, and the incredible biodiversity you find in such places. Since I developed an interest in photography, I’ve always wanted to shoot wildlife, and I’ve done it a few times, but without really understanding the subjects – flora and fauna.

So when a opportunity (Naturalist training programme at JLR Bannerghatta Nature Camp conducted by Karthik) presented itself to really learn and understand nature I jumped at it. It was a 3 day Naturalist training programme with 16 of us in the batch. Sumeet and Santosh carpooled with me, and we reached early and waited for the bus to pick us up and drop us at the camp; they do not allow private vehicles to enter the park. After checking into our tents, we had a short orientation/introduction session with Karthik, who then asked us to give ourselves a name of a bird/animal starting with the same letter as our name, and so I was Shark Sandeep (my lack of knowledge on fauna evident here) for the rest of the camp.

Our first session with Karthik was about the purpose of this training program and a discussion on who is a naturalist and what is his role [Naturalist is someone who studies natural history]. The good thing about all the indoor sessions were that they were never boring and was always interactive with some lively debate among us. I also got a better understanding into what biodiversity meant – it is the variety in genes, species and ecosystems in a specific region. Western Ghats that lies in our neighborhood is one such example, and is one of the top ten biodiversity hotspots in the world.

The program also gave me my first introduction to bird watching and learning a great deal about birds. It was fascinating to learn about their behaviors, characteristics, and learning how to spot and identify them. What Karthik did so well was to teach us the basics, and trying to instill in us the right approach to bird watching. With a long lens and a fancy camera, we sometimes would be more interested in capturing the bird on camera, rather than watching the bird, its physical shape, feather patterns, its behavior and so on. He made us carry a notepad and a pen on our nature walks. I too was tempted to use the camera first- identify later approach, but from the second nature walk onwards when I decided to change that approach, it was an entirely different experience. Having visited nature hotspots all over Karnataka, so many times, I never bothered to look above or below my eye line, and was only interested in spotting the mega fauna – the tigers and the elephants, the ‘poster boys’ of the jungle, like most of us. What we don’t realize is the abundance of life that thrives high up in the trees and at the ground level. Watching and observing that gave me a whole new perspective and appreciation of the nature around us.

During the three days I also made some new friends and we had some interesting discussions on a whole lot of things ranging from nature, conservation, education, Bangalore and traveling. Karthik did a great job in teaching us so many things by allowing us to make mistakes and then pointing it out in the field. I look forward to keeping in touch with everyone I met at the camp and hope to meet more such people as I explore this further.

Here are some books, online groups and movies that came up during our sessions and discussions that you might be interested in:

Birds of the Indian Subcontinent
A Field Guide To The Birds Of The Indian Subcontinent
Books by Salim Ali
Bng Birds – Yahoo group
india-nature-pixs – Yahoo group
The Truth About Tigers – A film made by wildlife enthusiasts who we got to meet and speak to. They are trying to spread awareness through this film by screening it at education institutions. Take a look and pass it along
Story of Stuff