Meet the passionate birder, the FLAMINGO MAN of India

Vidyasagar Hariharan moved to Mumbai in 2013. He is a banker by profession and specialize in Transaction Banking. Apart from birding he also do portraits and landscapes as a part time photographer. He also take a lot of interest in walking as a leisure time activity. He has completed the Mumbai Half Marathon twice and also completed tough runs like the Satara Hill Marathon and the Sanjai Gandhi National Park 25 km run.

Though he has been interested in nature since childhood, he was neither a birder nor a photographer till the year 2016. In the year 2015, he joined a fitness coaching class to participate in marathons. In the class, some of his running friends talked about cycling to Sewri to watch flamingos. He did not even know till then that Flamingos visit Mumbai. He bought a point and shoot 60x optical zoom camera by the end of 2015. A chance encounter with a Shaheen Falcon in the cliff edges of Malshej ghat led to a series of good clicks with the point and shoot camera.

He came to know from his friends that this was a Shaheen Falcon, a non-migrating sub species of the peregrine falcon. This also led to an interest in birding and he also decided to buy a DSLR and a birding lens. He bought a Canon Eos 700R and a Tamron 150-600 mm lens.

He also did cycle with his friends to Sewri to see the flamingos. When he told this to his running coach who lives in Navi Mumbai, he told him that there is a small lake behind the NRI complex residential area in Navi Mumbai, to which Flamingos visit in thousands during the season and you could see and photograph them in close quarters.

He took him there in March 2016. He was stunned with the number of flamingos there. During these four years of coverage of flamingos, he has got some good amount of pictures highlighting different aspects of their life. He also got to know more about their visiting pattern changing according to tide times and various aspects of their colorful life.

During this coverage, he also came to know the man animal conflict which was endangering the habitat of the flamingos. He decided to start his exclusive page in Instagram called ‘Flamingosofmumbai ‘ to highlight their cause, which has received a good response. Some of his clicks have been featured in Nat Geo your shot daily dozen, BBC earth’s Instagram page.

Though he clicks a lot of close up shots of the pink beauties, he prefers to click habitat shots to highlight the man vs bird conflict and the need for preserving their habitat. Apart from flamingos , he likes Peacocks and Falcons, which are two of his other favorite bird species. He also emphasize on backyard birding, as we first need to know the flora and fauna of the neighborhood.

Editor’s Concluding Note:

You have seen the Vidyasagar Hariharan’s exciting journey and it is nothing short of an Inspiration. I wish him a great journey forward and all the very best!

– Best Regards from Alvis Lazarus

I’m featuring few more amazing Flamingos beauty captured by Vidyasagar Hariharan:

Flamingos