Megha Chaturvedi has been following an afternoon ritual during this lockdown. After lunch, once there’s shade in her balcony, she puts down a gadda, places her baby Kilol on it, and settles in to do #balconybirding. Her dog Tintin joins in too. She spends the next few hours observing the greenery around, looking for that slight movement and change in colour that indicates there’s a bird. The camera comes out and she starts shooting. The new mum is now also an amateur birder.
On March 24, 2020, India was put on a complete lockdown in a bid to control the spread of COVID-19. Forced indoors, some people turned to their balconies and windows to observe the world around them. Birds became the focus. A new group of birders are discovering the joys of sitting with a binocular or camera and observing and documenting the avian population in their neighbourhood.
It even made Bird Count India (an informal partnership of organisations and groups) announce a Birding Lockdown Challenge. It’s a simple one: they invite keen birders to watch birds from the same spot twice a day (morning and evening) every day for exactly 15 minutes, and document the findings.
A fun hobby
Birding is one of the best ways to experience wildlife in your own backyard. It’s a hobby which does not require any prior skill sets. All you have to do is look. “Birds have always been around us in urban settings but may have been overlooked. But given the drop in noise levels, they are definitely heard more,” says Mittal Gala, project co-ordinator, Bird Count India.
It took the birth of her child to help journalist-on-hiatus Chaturvedi to realise the presence of birds in her neighbourhood in Delhi. “After Kilol was born, I started waking early to feed her. In the morning quiet, I discovered the birds,” she says.
Now, she spends whatever time she gets in the balcony, looking out for, and photographing, brown-headed barbets, sunbirds, parakeets and bulbuls. She uploads the pictures on social media. Chaturvedi follows birders and birding accounts like Bird Count India, Avibase, Neha Sinha, Early Bird India, Arati Kumar Rao, and NCF India to improve her knowledge of birding and to attempt identifying the birds. It’s what helped her recognise the rosy starling, a migratory bird that travels to India from Eastern Europe, right outside her balcony.
Those afternoon sessions are essential to her day. “It is our time off,” she says. “I hope my daughter inculcates a love for birds because of it.”
Over in the cool climes of Duhra Village, Nainital, AM Diwakar spends his lockdown photographing the birds near his home, on his morning and evening walk (restricted to a 100m stretch because of social distancing rules). The consultant in business development and policy got into birding at the behest of another birder. He does it for “fun”, making notes and comparing his findings to information in the birding books he owns, and sharing his findings with his ecologist and birder friends.
Diwakar lives near the Nandhaur Wildlife Sanctuary and his house is near a gorge that drops into a river. He has seen over 60 species of birds thus far, but has photographed 40. “I used to do this sporadically before because I didn’t have much time. Now, I have enough time,” he says.
An observation in time
Time is of the essence in birdwatching. “To know the birds, you have to observe and spend time with them. Every day, you will learn something new. How a particular bird looks and behaves, how it interacts with the environment and other birds. You have to learn to observe things,” says Bijoy Venugopal, birder and travel and nature writer. “Birding isn’t about only identifying the birds. There’s a lot more to it.”
Venugopal would know. An illness last year forced him to rest, and rethink his priorities. “I’ve been birding since 1989 but on and off. When I fell ill, I realised that I wasn’t doing enough. I decided to start birding around my place,” he says.
His place in Bellandur in Bengaluru is near a wetland. Venugopal began making daily trips there to observe the inhabitants. After the lockdown, he has moved to his terrace and balcony. “Back in the 1980’s, I didn’t even have a field guide. We just watched birds and made notes. I do the same now. You look at a crow for two days and you start noticing differences. There will be a lot of subtleties you may not have seen before,” he says. “You need a trained eye to identify them. When you see a new species for the first time, it will be different from everything you have read and studied about them.”
Avinash Kumar has been birding for three years, ever since he moved to Bir in Himachal Pradesh to run a hostel. He goes on walks and hikes to the open spaces and tea gardens around, armed with his trusty camera (and zoom lens). “Spending time in the wild helps you realise patterns: what time do they appear, which are the migratory birds, which birds don’t get along. I’ve also learnt to follow their senses. I know there’s a storm coming based on the reaction of these birds,” he says.
Another avid photographer is Jebamalai Michael Augustine in Chennai who has been clicking birds for three years. “You need a lot of patience for birding. I have to keenly watch what they are doing and what time they arrive and leave. I keep track. Patience is key,” he says.
A(pp)s you like it
People aren’t just bird-watching. They are finding new ways to document their findings: through photographs, video, sound recordings and even animated videos. “There are many more people looking at birds than ever before, in different ways too. This is in part due to the technology we possess,” says Gala.
Kumar uses Google Lens to identify the birds. Venugopal documents his sightings through photos, records their calls, makes notes on his phone and transfers these to a journal, and he writes about his findings on the blog he helped create, Green Ogre India. Technology has made it easier to birdwatch. People take videos and photos on their phone or DSLR cameras, they record sounds of the birds, use apps to identify the birds, and rely on social media or Whatsapp groups to share findings and articles.
Ambika Patil who lives in HSR, Bengaluru, has participated in The Great Backyard Bird Count (a four-day event that engages bird watchers across the world to create a real-time snapshot of bird populations), is part of a Whatsapp group, and a Telegram group of Bengaluru birders, and is planning on soon attending a webinar on the basics of birding. “Birding is a bit of a nerdy habit,” says the marketing professional.
Patil has been birding since 2011 but got more seriously involved last year. Her husband is an avid birder too and they go on birding trips together. She uploads pictures and information of the birds on eBird, an app and online database created by Cornell Lab of Ornithology offering real-time data about birds. “It’s ideal for someone who doesn’t know anything about birding. It’s a repository that provides information about seasons, kinds of birds, recordings of their calls, etc,” she says.
Another couple, also avid birders are Gurgaon’s Manon Verchot and Sanshey Biswas. Verchot, the digital editor for Mongabay, took to birding recently. “As a child, I would get bored when my parents went birding. Recently, they came to visit and went birding in the vicinity. They left behind their books on birds. It caught my interest. Later, Sanshey and I visited Bharatpur Bird Sanctuary and we got hooked onto birding,” she says.
In March, when they started their social distancing, they turned their attention to their backyard, observing the bush, and water birds occupying the tiny pond and the patches of green outside their home. They’ve even created and put out a makeshift bird feeder. Their tally is currently 25, which includes white-breasted kingfisher, greater coucal, green bee eater, purple sunbird, black ibis, and yellow-bellied prinia. “Some of the birds I already know. To identify the others, I message and tweet out to friends. There’s a nice online community of birders,” she adds.
Taking their documentation one step further, the duo started Neigh-bird: Birding from the balcony through COVID-19 lockdown – short videos showing clips of the birds captured, and Animoji versions of themselves talking about their birding journey. They are fun and informative. “And a reason to get us out of our pyjamas,” says Verchot.
There are many advantages to birding. It’s a way of connecting to wildlife and understanding the need to live symbiotically with them, it raises awareness about the destructions of habitats, it teaches people patience, and documenting the birds can help create an exhaustive database of Indian birds. “There are a lot of studies and anecdotes that tell us how bird-watching helps in reducing stress, and depression, and increasing concentration. It’s a bit like meditating, only here you keep your eyes and ears open and concentrate,” says Gala.
Concentrate enough and you will be rewarded with the dulcet tones of the shikra or Asian koel, or get to see a kingfisher diving in to catch fish, or watch a black kite swoop down majestically. The sky always tells a story.
How to begin birding, courtesy Bird Count India.
• What you will need: Binoculars, a field guide or e-book on Indian Birds (Eg: Birds of the Indian Subcontinent by Richard Grimmett, Carol and Tim Inskipp), a notebook, your phone, power bank (optional), camera (optional) and sound recording equipment (optional).
• You can start by looking at the birds that are around you, even if you live in an urban setting with few trees. Make a note of the size, shape, colour, pattern that you see in a bird. Describe a bird from its beak to tail and if writing is too much, try sketching.
• Note down what the bird was doing. The habitat where you saw it can also be a clue to help in the identification of the species.
• With all this information collected, try to find your bird in the bird book (known as field guides) or the app, Merlin Bird ID.
• Once you have learned the drill, try to systematically document what you’ve observed. Use an app, eBird, or Merlin Bird ID (designed as a “birding coach” for beginning and intermediate birders. The India pack, one can access information and photos of over a 1,000 species). The app is a great way to keep a track of where you were birding, what you saw, and how many. Through it, you can also keep a record of your birding trips and lists.
• Technology can aid the amateur birder. Apps and platforms like eBird, iNaturalist, Internet of Birds by BNHS allow you to document personal discoveries, find information, and connect with other birders. Similarly, joining Whatsapp groups and local birding initiatives and communities can prove beneficial.
• There are a lot of professional birders online. Following the right people on social media can help you as an amateur birder — they share information, tips, and tricks on how to spot birds and help you identify them.
About the contributor
Related Content
