Tag: birds (page 1 of 1)

Bird Business—Foreword

My foreword to the book by cartoonist and illustrator, Rohan Chakravarthy: Bird Business: Illustrated Peeks into the Daily Lives of Indian Birds (Bombay Natural History Society, Mumbai, 2019, 106 pp., Rs 550, ISBN 978-93-84678-09-8).

Art and science come together rarely, and they come together with humour even more rarely. In this book, as in much of Rohan Chakravarty’s work, they all meld beautifully, with touches of allure, sensitivity, and grace. Here, he brings to life in his unique style the lifestyle quirks and natural history of a hundred species of Indian birds. Each artful page on a particular species grabs you with its visual and aesthetic appeal. It also distils information on the bird’s habits and natural history, and bustles with the vitality, peculiarity, and idiosyncracies of that bird’s behaviour. And all of this is done in a manner that no field guide, bird book, encyclopedia, or video documentary on Indian birds has ever achieved.

This is a chirpy and sprightly book, brimming with life, with scarcely a dull moment in its pages. The birds leap and glide and whistle and wag and swoop and spear and court and cavort. They dive into oceans and wing over mountains, they chisel into trees and probe into mud, they sing their hearts out and serenade their mates, they nest in trees and houses and earth-tunnels and mounds, they gobble garbage and slurp nectar, they drink and dance and do the doo-doo.

There’s so much liveliness in each page and the behaviour of each species is illustrated so well that you may be tempted to flip quickly to the next page, skipping past the words to the next eye-catching illustration. But that would be a mistake. The writing, too, is not to be missed. Rohan’s brief word-portraits of the birds and accurate and charming descriptions of their curious adaptations and behaviours will bring you many a chuckle, much jaw-dropping astonishment, and ultimately a new or renewed intimacy with these wonderful birds.

For children and adults, there is much to learn within these pages. I say this not just as an admirer of Rohan’s work, but as a hobby birdwatcher for over 35 years and a bird researcher for at least half that period. I learnt much that I never knew and felt delighted afresh in the little that I did, seeing it portrayed in this unique way. The species illustrated here also offer a glimpse of India’s remarkable diversity of 1300 bird species: from the house sparrow and barn swallow familiar to almost everyone, the black kites of our cities and the cattle egrets of our countryside, from daytime larks and eagles to nightjars and owls, and rarities like the satyr tragopan and the endangered great Indian bustards.

The book both reveals and evokes a love for birds and a concern over their plights and lives. In our rapidly changing planet, the plight of birds only reflects our own plight and, in that sense, bird business is our business, too. This, you can discover for yourself, when you turn to the delightful pages that follow.

Bamboo Bonfires and Biodiversity

Can wildlife and slash-and-burn shifting agriculture coexist? This question led me into remote rainforests of northeast India in 1994 for a field research study in Dampa Tiger Reserve, Mizoram. In December 2013, nearly two decades later, I went there again. From the Anamalai hills in south India, I travelled across the country to initiate a comprehensive bird survey in Dampa, including a resurvey of my old field sites. As a prelude to other writings I will post here in the days ahead, I post below an edited version of an article about my work in Dampa in the mid 1990s. This article first appeared in the May/June 2007 issue of Wildlife Conservation magazine (a remarkable periodical published by the Wildlife Conservation Society, which after a print run of over 112 years, perished with the recession in 2009). Original PDF here.

The heat from the fire is intense, even from a hundred metres away. The entire slope is ablaze. Piles of slashed vegetation and tens of thousands of bamboo culms that had sun-dried for three months burn ferociously. The bamboo hisses, crackles, and explodes, audible a mile away. Hot gusts of wind scud the fire upslope, throwing branches and small trees ten metres into the air. High above, unmindful of the billowing fumes, swallows and drongos, in a frenzy of activity, hawk insects. Ash and smoke darken the sky, reducing the sun to a dull orange ball. In twenty minutes, almost as rapidly as it started, the fiery spectacle ends. On the soil, only a blanket of smoldering ash and tree trunks remain.

… This post first appeared in my blog on the Coyotes Network on 31 January 2014. Read more in the The Wild Heart of India: Nature and Conservation in the City, the Country, and the Wild.

The pigeon’s passengers

There is a modesty in their conquest of mountains. From tall trees on high ridges, they scan the landscape, their heads turning on long and graceful necks. They have scaled peaks, even surpassed them. Yet, they speak only in soft and hushed tones that resonate among stately trees. For, the imperial pigeons are a dignified lot, keeping the company of great trees.

… This post first appeared in The Hindu Sunday Magazine on 6 May 2012. Read more in The Wild Heart of India: Nature and Conservation in the City, the Country, and the Wild.

The whistling thrush

The whistling thrush sings—the clouds approach—
Lilting tunes smooth—as the river’s flow
Is it for love, or gain—for intruder, reproach—
Who am I to say, or know?

The stream speaks softly—the banks glisten
With sparkling shingles—and damselfly wings—
Earthly purpose—no place for heaven
Is this the reason—the whistling thrush sings?

The voice of generations—across the firmament of time
Or ripple song—damselfly idyll anew—
With sprightly pose—the thrush sings sublime
A river-melody, an earth-harmony—I wish I knew—

The song-stream flows, slows—eternal
The sparkle-sun dips, slips—funereal
Is this the way—of space and time to go?
Who am I to say, or know?

Death on the highway

This article was published in The Hindu Survey of the Environment 2009 (pages 113 – 118) without the supporting footnotes. The original article with footnotes and photographs, appeared on the NCF blog, EcoLogic on 10 October 2009. For a revised and updated version, read the Chapter in my book: The Wild Heart of India: Nature and Conservation in the City, the Country, and the Wild.

Crunch! Splat! Thud! A daily massacre is occurring under the wheels of our vehicles. Thousands of lives are snuffed out tragically, instantaneously, and yet, we hardly notice.

Around India, as in other parts of the world, millions of animals risk daily encounter with increasingly fast vehicles plying on an expanding meshwork of roads and highways.


Read more in The Wild Heart of India: Nature and Conservation in the City, the Country, and the Wild.