The Terai Tiger

[Pckts]

For us who haven't seen Tigers in the wild, you wan't to know how hard it actually is to spot a tiger, here you go.
Read this story from Adrian Steirn, one of my all time favorite photographers, I just posted some of his work in the Lion pictures thread if you'd like to take a look.


Here is the story below


How I photographed a tiger for the first time

Wildlife photographer Adrian Steirn describes the moment when he photographed a tiger from less than 35 metres away

*This image is copyright of its original author

By Adrian Steirn
7:00AM BST 27 Jul 2013

*This image is copyright of its original author

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The Jungle Book was one of the first books I remember reading. As a child I was captivated by the adventures of Mowgli and would often recreate scenes with Baghera and Baloo the Bear, hiding from Mowgli’s nemesis - the Royal Bengal Tiger – Shere Khan.
This is where my love affair with tigers began. I tried to picture what a tiger would look like up close and how an animal so distinctively orange could camouflage itself in a world of greens and browns.
It was this fascination with tigers that led me to a career in photography; I used the camera as a way to seek the adventures I’d dreamed of as a boy and to get up-close with wildlife.

*This image is copyright of its original author

To reach the National Parks of Nepal as part of the team established by Whiskas and WWF, to document the work being done to protect these animals from extinction, was an opportunity I seized with both hands. Finally I had the chance to witness a tiger in the wild for the very first time - and yet I was conflicted: I quietly worried how the reality would compare to my imagination.
“Please understand that it’s very unlikely you will see a tiger and even more unlikely that you’ll get a photograph. They are very secretive animals. I’ve worked in this National Park for many years and haven’t once been able to photograph a wild tiger,” said my guide as he eyed my assortment of cameras and lenses.
I knew the odds were against me but in that moment I understood the lengths I would go to, to capture that photo.
I live in Africa. I have spent years photographing lions and leopards on foot, from vehicles and even helicopters. The drill was pretty similar for these big cats - your best opportunity to photograph them is at dusk and dawn and back home, trawling slowly through the reserves in a specialised Landrover had become the quintessential photographic safari experience. However as I found myself on the other side of the globe on the back of an elephant wondering how to secure my cameras, sit comfortably and try to spot one of only 120 tigers in Nepal, I began to understand the challenges I would face.
The local communities had explicitly briefed me that the best way to spot a tiger was to sit atop one the custom built towers, used by rangers to spot and monitor tigers, and wait until midday. At this point if you were very lucky and very quiet you might get a glimpse of this elusive animal.
We only had four days, which was spent waiting by rivers in the heat with very little shelter provided by the tiny trees, and bit by bit reality had hacked away at our enthusiasm and energy. On the third day our sound man had been with a team who had seen a tiger from a distance of two kilometers and this had lifted our spirits. That was until we returned to camp and saw what it looked like in the viewfinder. I looked at the grainy distant spec of a tiger with disappointment and really understood just how rare a tiger sighting was.
So this was it. I had failed. We were due to leave the jungle for Katmandu in ninety minutes without any tiger photos. Sitting in the dust I furiously managed my expectations - then came the strangled noise of my guide screaming “tiger” out the side of his mouth as quietly as he could.
I followed his hand out onto the horizon and saw nothing. Then my eyes locked onto the tiniest of specks and my spirits dropped. The speck must have been over 1.5 km away in a pool that had formed in the adjacent river fork. I grabbed the longest lens I could hold and started to run.
My guide stopped ahead of me as the path vanished. “We cannot go any further,” he said dejectedly and handed me back my binoculars. Even magnified the animal was still minute, however the size of the head was enormous, suggesting the tiger was a male.
At this point my guide seemed to measure the importance of getting in closer and suggested another way down to the pool. We ran. As we closed in on the tiger, I asked the guide to remain where he was as I would need to go in through the reeds alone if I was to get a chance at the tiger. He shook my hand and wished me good luck as I rechecked my camera settings and started to crawl my way through the reeds.
Now there are a few things to remember when crawling anywhere - it takes a long time, it’s actually really hard work and the lower in the grass you get, the less you can see what is ahead of you. By this stage the last glimpse I’d had of the tiger had been about 30 minutes ago so I tried to stay on track by following the largest tree on the horizon behind the big cat.
As I crawled through the reeds I became disorientated, remaining as silent as possible whilst keeping the big camera off the ground. At about 400m in I startled some spotted deer that were hiding in amongst the reeds. Although reassured that I had managed to stalk within meters of the tiger’s main prey, the flip-side provoked all sorts of thoughts to fly through my head.
My mind wandered nervously as I imagined crawling into the tiger amongst the reeds - it would be as surprised as me and at that proximity and there would be no standing it down. I decided that the tiger would hear me in the undergrowth long before I would see him and move off never to be seen again.
I moved on as slowly and as silently as I could. Another 50 metres and I could see the riverbed through the thinning reeds. I scanned the scene and there - to my eternal surprise - in the middle of the shallow water hole sat an enormous male tiger, completely unaware of my presence.
I decided to absorb the scene before I made any movement as it was likely that the tiger would dart off as soon as it detected me. Fortunately the wind was in my favour so I edged forward weighing up my options. To get the shot I would have to emerge from the reeds about 35 metres away from the tiger and due to the height of the undergrowth, it meant that I would need to stand at full height. The last couple of metres felt like torture. My mind skipped momentarily back to the Jungle Book. I took a final breath, wiped the sweat from the camera shutter and slowly stood up at the edge of the bank.
The look on the big cat’s face was almost embarrassed as it slowly turned to face me. Water dripped off the thick orange pelt. The size of it was extraordinary. I willed the calmest energy I could towards the tiger as I slowly squeezed the shutter. The reflex mirror broke the spell as the tiger turned its back and slunk off through the water to the opposite embankment. I fired off more shots as it walked and then it stopped to face me and stared. That orange was as brilliant as I had imagined.
And then the tiger was gone, moving effortlessly through the long grass and vanishing from sight.
There are around than 3,200 wild tigers left in the wild. The feeling that I can’t shake is the age-old conservation question – ‘will these great cats be here for our next generation?’
I imagine a little boy in fifty years time, reading the Jungle Book in his bedroom and asking his mum where he can see a wild tiger, only to be told that the last wild tigers had become extinct twenty five years earlier. Surely in a progressive world we can find the means to save an animal that can’t save itself. Without us there is no them. It’s often said but few take heed: “What we do to the animals we do to ourselves”.
whiskas.co.uk/wwf

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