Mumbai, MAHARASHTRA :

A recent collection of his radio talks point to the stellar role birds play in preserving our environment

From busting myths about fireflies lighting up the homes of weaver birds to explaining the whys and hows of the spectacular phenomenon of bird migrations, there has been, perhaps, no one better than Sálim Ali, India’s best-known ornithologist, to demystify the avian world. To Ali’s already formidable list of works, comes another: a collection of his radio talks. Edited by Tara Gandhi, Words for Birds (Black Kite), the book shows him doing what he did best — reaching out to a cross-section of society on birds and the stellar role they play in preserving our environment.

“He was an excellent communicator. He gave a number of lectures and he communicated to people of different professions. For instance, while speaking to mountaineers, he would say — ‘since you go to great heights, to places that ornithologists are not able to go to, look out for nesting sites, for Lammergeiers, the big vultures that are seen in high altitudes. Look around and if you see any birds, let us know, take down notes’. He would talk to people to get out of their own turf or specialisation and become interested in the wider picture,” says Gandhi, who was guided by Ali for her MSc. in field ornithology  shortly before he passed away in 1987, at the age of 90.

He was, as she says, ahead of his times in understanding the importance of involving people in conservation. “You will come across one of his talks where he tells his listeners that if you see any unusual birds on the seashore, write to us. This struck me. Nowadays, we talk about citizen science, lay people’s involvement in scientific documentation. A number of bird watchers are specially involved in citizen science — doctors, teachers and people from many other disciplines are making bird lists and sending them to be compiled. A lot of important material comes out of analysing this data . Those days, nearly 60 to 70 years ago, Sálim Ali would urge his readers and listeners to write to the Bombay Natural History Society (BNHS) to record the information.”

Ali who took over the BNHS after Independence and remained with it for decades, was key in keeping the organisation going and in initiating a systematic study of birds. “He had a vision, which was much ahead of his time and very contemporary,” says Gandhi, who has previously edited A Bird’s Eye View: The Collected Essays and Shorter Writings of Sálim Ali (II Volumes, Permanent Black, 2018) and is the author of Birds, Wild Animals and Agriculture: Conflict and Coexistence in India (The Orient Blackswan; 2015).

Delivered between 1941 and 1985, Ali’s talks were recorded mainly at the All India Radio (AIR) station in Mumbai and range from one on trends in bird study to talking about bird life for a school broadcast, in conversational Hindustani titled Chand Hairat Angez Parandon aur Janwaron ke Ghar, speaking to children who didn’t speak English. In his autobiography, The Fall of a Sparrow (Oxford University Press, 1985), he recounts his days as a guide lecturer in the Natural History Section of the Prince of Wales Museum in Mumbai, where he remembers particularly enjoying “talking to pupils from the School for the Blind, because of the lively interest they showed.” Gandhi says, “He made an effort to reach out to children to make them understand more about birds and nature in an easy way.”

After his stint at the Museum, Ali spent a year in Germany, training under Erwin Stresemann at the Berlin University Zoological Museum, returning to India in 1930 and launching on a series of bird surveys across the country. Beginning at a time when ornithology, in his own words, was the “Cinderella of Indian Zoology”, Ali can be credited for taking the discipline outside museums and collections and out in the natural habitat and widening its scope. “The kind of projects he undertook later on from the ’60s onwards were extremely important and absolutely pragmatic. He took on a project on birds in the aviation sector, that is bird hazards in aviation. It was a huge project and it was entirely for saving human lives, for preventing huge losses. The study tried to find methods to avoid bird hits on aircraft — observing the time of the day, the trajectory of the birds, which species were involved and how to prevent them from congregating in the airports. Earlier, his surveys were about collections which became a valuable and permanent resource , but later, he moved away completely from the whole idea of merely collecting specimens when he became the head of BNHS,” says Gandhi.

But being dubbed India’ birdman sometimes shadowed his role as a conservationist. “He would say repeatedly that everything is interlinked in nature. It is not just the birds themselves, it is the habitat of the birds and different ecosystems in India he wanted conserved for the sake of all the flora and fauna within them. He spoke about conservation of endangered species and regretted that so many species had died out. Ali was instrumental in getting a number of national parks and protected areas established. Through his communication skills he was even able to persuade royal families to set aside their hunting reserves for conserving the species within them,” says Gandhi.

source: http://www.indianexpress.com / Indian Express / Home> Books and Literature / by Devyani Onial, New Delhi / April 03rd, 2022