The tawny eagle is one of my favourite raptors of the open country around Bangalore. Most of my photographs of them come from the grasslands and dry lake beds on the city's edges, where these large, elegant eagles perch out in the open or ride the morning thermals over the scrub.
What makes them endlessly interesting to photograph is how much they vary. Tawny eagles come in a whole range of plumages — pale, rufous and deep chocolate-brown morphs — and over the years I have been fortunate to photograph several of them. The rich chocolate morph, and the birds that combine pale and chocolate tones, are the ones I find most beautiful, and I never quite know which one the next eagle will turn out to be.
For all their size and presence, they carry themselves with a real grace. A tawny eagle sitting quietly on an open perch in the early light, or lifting off across the grassland, is one of those sights that keeps drawing me back to these familiar patches of open ground.
