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The Birds & Mammals of Ladakh Birds of Kangra
Birds and Mammals of Ladakh, published a few months earlier, is comparatively voluminous and decidedly unique in many aspects. Ladakh’s geographical inaccessi-bility has been a blessing and a blight for its wildlife. While holding at bay all forces inimical to the well being of its birds and mammals, it had discouraged deliberate field investigation and scientific documentation of its fauna and flora. However, since the mid-18th century, explorers, mountaineers and game trophy hunters had helped build a limited inventory of Ladakh’s wildlife. It is only now that Otto Pfister, a Swiss national and accomplished ornithologist-photographer, has authored the first comprehensive work on the birds and mammals of this region. Beginning in 1976, Pfister made over twelve visits to the Ladakh region, each one stretching to a five-month stay.
There is one black and white photo of a herd of Tibetan Gazzel animals, which will be "new" to most of the Indians. To the best of my knowledge, Pfister is the first to have both written the text and photographed almost all the objects therein. Apart from the scientific value of the book, it would be an excellent companion to all lay travellers to Ladakh. As for the Birds of Kangra, most of these were first documented by Hugh Whistler in 1926. Though posted at Dharamsala as Superintendent of Police from 1920-24, Whistler was an ornithologist first and a policeman next. So it was natural that the first-ever checklist of 403 birds of Kangra should have been compiled by him! Seventy-five years later in 1994, a young Dutchman, Jan Willem den Besten, arrives at Dharamsala to take up the waste-disposal project at McLeod Ganj set up by the Tibetan government-in-exile. Besten’s first love is also birds and photography, and he too was destined to be remembered for his systematic observations, research and compilation of the most significant database which takes Whistler’s count of bird species of the Kangra Valley from 403 to 555 by December, 2003. Of course, Besten has reaped the benefits of vastly improved ground mobility, newer generation of spotting-scopes and camera-ware and easy access to immense research sources through electronic means. Besten goes on to photograph over 500 of the 555 species detailed in the book, which places him in the class of Otto Pfister. Besten was indeed all the more fortunate that he had the very gifted Noriko Kawakami to design the book, brilliantly juxtaposing photos with text with the most captivating effect. The other great attribute of the book is that Besten retells delightfully local folklores connected with 38 birds that no previous book can boast of. Above all, Besten has crowned his love of birds by having His Holiness the Dalai Lama write the preface of the book. For, we know from history that Emperor Asoka, the most devoted adherent of Budhism, had made preservation of animals an instrument of the state policy (Rock Edict-I). That tenet of Budhism nurtured and refined over centuries now finds poetic and most sensitive expression in Dalai Lama’s words in the preface: "Ever since I was a boy in Tibet. I have particularly enjoyed watching birds. The dignified bearded-vulture soaring high above`85the flocks of geese, and occasionally the call of the eagle owl`85. It is very relaxing just to enjoy the dawn and listen to the birds." Maybe that is also the voice of the innermost anguish of an `E9migr`E9. Thank you Besten for leading us Indians back to our heritage of caring for the avian, first etched on a rock in 247 BC. |
Till
about the 1970s, the more commonly accessible books on India’s birds
could have been counted on the fingertips. Beginning in1980, there was a
phenomenal growth of bird books, textual, photo guides and illustrated
field guides. Each new publication was hailed as a benchmark in
excellence, only to be outpaced just a couple of years later by yet
another! The first of these trendsetter publications was the slim
176-page Collins Handguide, which was published in 1980. The
latest arrival, Birds of Kangra, too, is equally
slim (176 pages), but undeniably has a class of its own.
His
years long labour of love gives us detailed life histories of 276
species of birds and 30 species of mammals together with a colour
photograph of each. The text is exhaustive and all photographs except a
few are very good.