Among the species seen in Kahna Tiger Reserve in India was the Golden Jackal. I was fortunate to get some good sightings of these, particularly in the early morning when we encountered a pair as they returned to a kill they'd made. The prey animal was a Spotted Deer fawn which they'd already partly eaten. There was some interaction between the two dogs as one made it clear who was the dominant partner, warning the other off as it ate.
Golden Jackal moving through grass.
Golden Jackal pauses on road, early morning Kahna Tiger Reserve.
Not for sharing!
Golden Jackal on fawn kill.
Challenges with Video.
In addition to taking stills, modern digital cameras of course also offer the ability to capture high resolution video. This requires a different mind-set and different set of skills. I must confess to being a video novice, however there are times when video is a better medium for capturing what is happening and I did remind myself of the value of pausing occasionally from still shooting to grab some video clips.
Video ideally involves the use of specific equipment which when travelling with weight restrictions to consider becomes problematic. Being restricted to shooting from inside a safari vehicle, I choose to use a monopod as opposed to a tripod. For still photography this is a good policy but, ideally, for video a solid tripod with a fluid head would be the choice. Also, audio becomes important but a challenge working from a safari vehicle at a distance to the subject. You are sharing a vehicle with others and have to contend with the noise of those people, their cameras clicking, drivers talking, other vehicles using the roads, etc.
Here I present a very simple (and short) video clip, quickly processed with Apple's iMovie program. I decided to go without an audio track for the reasons explained above. As a new (first time) user of the program, I kept the editing options to the absolute minimum, quickly abandoning the post processing image stabilisation option which gave a result which was "funky" to say the least. The result is that the video is slightly shaky but to be expected given that the capture was done with only monopod support and a long telephoto lens to boot!
At a latter date I'll be able to access more comprehensive tools and may well reprocess the video then. ~KD.