India, Sept. 19 -- Photographing wildlife can be educative if the lensman is observant rather than one merely interested in clicking a proverbial "pretty picture". In his ongoing series of hunting-action photographs from the Saketri grasslands east of the Sukhna lake, Anuj Jain captured a vivid contrast of emotional expressions.

An eastern cattle egret had seized in her bill an Indian three-banded skink (Eutropis trivittata, as identified from Jain's photograph by Kaushik Deuti, a Zoological Survey of India scientist and lead author of the volume, Skinks of India). There was terror reflected in the skink's bulging eyes as she took her last glance of the cosmos. The flailing tail seemed a half-mast, an augury of her impending doom. The eg...