We visit Karnala Bird Sanctuary very often for two reasons. One is for the natural environment and the other is for the food that is served at the canteen run by a group of women. I’ll be writing more details about this in one of my upcoming articles about the sanctuary. For now, I want to focus on the subject of the pictures that I’m about to share. The Monkeys at Karnala Bird Sanctuary. Our last visit made sure we had quite a few encounters with the monkeys. As soon as you get closer to the sanctuary, you start seeing groups of monkeys on both sides of the Mumbai-Goa highway. They’re usually there expecting food from the passerby or just to cross the road. We’ve seen cars stopping and throwing food at the monkeys on a few occasions.
Monkeys at Karnala Bird Sanctuary are mainly found near the canteen area. While people order and consume food at the tables, the monkeys prefer to linger around the canteen area hoping that some visitor may share some food or at least drop a food item by mistake which they can come and pick up in a cool manner but then, run away. A similar thing happened with us. One of our friends dropped a piece of onion pakoda (kaanda-bhajji) by mistake. This was seen by one of the monkeys who promptly came and picked it up only to get into a fight with another one. They’re all very aggressive when it comes to food. But whatever they pickup, gets stored in their mouths in their cheek pouch. And from their look, it seemed all of them had already collected quite a bit of food.
While my folks enjoyed their meal, I managed to grab a quick bite and then wanted to focus on capturing some pictures of the monkeys as they seemed like posing really well and had very expressive eyes and mannerisms. That was something amazing that I noticed about the monkeys at Karnala Bird Sanctuary, for the first time. One of them even growled and took an attacking stance despite the fact that I wasn’t going too close to it. I had my Canon 70D with a 70-300 mm canon lens which allowed me to stay far and still get very close by means of the zoom.
About Karnala Bird Sanctuary, all I can say right now is that it’s a protected area. While I’d really prefer to encourage people to visit this place as often as possible to get opportunities to get closer to nature, I’d also like to request everyone to please keep that area clean. There’s a ban on plastic at the Karnala Bird Sanctuary but still some people manage to sneak it plastic packaged food items and dispose the same in the bins or on the ground. This plastic waste is easily accessible to the monkeys who would pick up the plastic bags and put their face inside it hoping to get food. It’s harmful in many ways so it would be really great if we just avoid carrying plastic packaged food all the way there and cause any sort of harm to the ecology and wildlife over there. The canteen serves really awesome food so no need to carry any food at all.
Will share more details about Karnala Bird Sanctuary and the canteen over there in one of my upcoming posts. For now, please do enjoy the pictures of the monkeys and share your views in the comments.
