Samudram Evening

Most days diggers are at Samudram taking sand and earth from the bottom of the almost dried-up lake, which they load onto lorries to be transported to various local building sites. The snap below is of an excavated hole filled in with water from earlier rain. The pool is replete with tiny, flying fingerlings and Egrets, Herons and Crows hang around the side of the pond waiting for their chance to catch dinner.

Unfortunately the advent of my six action-packed doggies sends most of the birds away, so thus far haven't been able to take any great photographs of the pond surrounded by flocks of Egrets and Pond Herons - its looks lovely though.

Sadly this particular evening my six doggies in their eagerness chasing a local dog around the pond, ran into an Indian Pond Heron and totally flattened him to the ground.

The poor thing was in a state of shock. Below the Indian Pond Heron, who I picked up and after climbing the embankment, attached to a high branch, to give him time to recover in safety.

I stayed with him for about 20 minutes and after he was well enough to try and give my fingers a peck, knew he was recovering nicely and it was safe to leave him on his own.

So my naughty doggies and I continued our evening Samudram walk.

And watched the sun go down.

If you want to learn out more about the Indian Pond Heron and Grey Heron, both found at Tiruvannamalai, check out Arunachala Birds for some brilliant snaps and good information.

Evening Walk

Well, its evening and most of the goats that graze around Samudram throughout the day, will have returned home -- so, the 'kids' (my doggies) and I can go for a nice evening walk. The doggies know each thorn of every acacia bush of the area - so absolutely no worry about them getting lost. So the six of them and I, head out. Its always a grand adventure. During the rainy season this whole area is several feet under water and at that time, you can find freshwater crabs, shrimps and fish. During the hot summer months the water reservoir is slowly drained of its water supply, and what was a submerged area, suddenly becomes the haunt of rabbits, foxes and mongoose. My doggies are very well fed and quite plumpy, and not keenly tuned hunters.

But they love the adventure of it and are aware of the scents of interesting game and occasionally we may even 'bump' into a fox or mongoose which gives the doggies a bit of a workout, but no danger of them catching anything.

Most evenings, its just a sedate and leisurely walkabout.

The next photograph is of Victor, our German Shepherd who we adopted from the Animal Shelter where he was living after being confiscated from abusive owners. He is filling out nicely. Happy Victor, has now learnt all about 'walkies' and swimming and has in fact turned out to be the biggest fan of the evening walk.




In countries near the equator sunrise and sunset throughout the year varies by only about half-an-hour, so there are none of those short winter, long summer days of the West. So, now that the goats have left, and my 'kids' can't get into too much mischief, we stroll and enjoy the gathering dusk and beautiful Arunachala.

Absolutely the BEST time of the day!