Field Notes
The steppe eagle is a bird I keep returning to. A large, powerful migrant that arrives in India for the winter, it is one of the raptors I have photographed most often — across the Little Rann of Kutch and the wetland edges of Bhigwan, over several journeys spanning years.
Much of steppe-eagle photography is a matter of sky and patience: watching a distant speck resolve into broad, fingered wings, waiting for the bird to catch a thermal or drop toward a perch. In the open country it favours, the background is often as important as the eagle itself.
It has quietly become part of my winters — a reason to return to the Rann, and one of the birds that first made me love raptors.
