A feast for tigers and wildlife buffs

For two tiger lovers, it was a veritable treat in Tadoba on Tuesday.

Shirish Burande and Vikram Phatak (both shared pictures with TOI) had an almost three-hour sighting of the Shivanzari tigress and all four of her sub-adult cubs.

The wildlife buffs could scarcely believe their luck as the big cats took turns to devour an Indian gaur they had hunted, and then splashed about in a nearby waterhole in Tadoba-Andhari tiger reserve.

Burande clicked one of the cubs as it tore into its quarry (inset). “Tigers sit beside their kill and start eating it from its hindquarters, but this cub was standing squarely on the gaur, which was quite funny,” he said. But the tiger family was very ‘decent’, he added, saying that they ate one-by-one, in an orderly fashion.