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Rishad Naoroji’s book on the biogeography of the subcontinent is among the most lucid expositions on the subject, says Lt Gen Baljit Singh (retd)
The first attempt at scientific documentation of India’s avifauna began with, The Book of Indian Birds authored by Major T.C. Jerdon of the Madras Presidency Army. It was published by Thacker Spink and Co, Calcutta in three volumes in 1862-64. The book was a summation mostly of the collective knowledge of the subject by Jerdon, Brian Hodgson (British Counsel at Kathmandu), Lt.-Col R.S. Tickell of the Bengal Presidency Army and Capt Sykes of the Bombay Presidency Army. Prominent among those who followed in their wake and built upon Jerdon’s ornithological edifice were A.O. Hume, ICS, Secretary to Government of India, Stuart Baker (IG Police, Bengal) Hugh Whistler (SP Police, Punjab) and Capt Ticehurst, IMS, of the Army of Sind, posted at Karachi. Salim Ali and Dillon Ripley collated the entire experience of over a hundred years and authored the magnum opus Handbook of the Birds of India & Pakistan in ten volumes in 1968-74. With all the species thus having been covered from across the subcontinent with an equal measure, it was natural that henceforth the focus would shift to area-specific and species-specific books. This new endeavour began with Birds of Western Ghats, Konkan and Malabar by Satish Pande (2003) Birds and Mammals of Ladakh by Otto Pfister (2004) and Birds of Kangra by Jan den Besten (2004). And now we have the first species-specific book Birds of Prey of the Indian Subcontinent by Rishad Naoroji which arrived in the book-stores in March 2007. Naoroji did well to have chosen the raptors as his subject because they are among the largest group of birds of our avifaune and they inhabit the entire subcontinent, what with the golden eagle nesting and breeding in Ladakh and the Great Nicobar Snake-eagle on the South-eastern tip of the country. How does Naoroji’s book differ from Ali and Ripley’s? Well for a start they had covered the 70 raptor species of the subcontinent in 158 pages of text and eight coloured plates whereas Naoroji devotes 503 pages to script alone! Each species is show-cased by three to 26 colour photos; many excellent, most good and some passable.
Birds of prey are notorious for changing their plumage shades and patterns almost by the month, the year round. So where photographs alone fail to capture the varied plumages, these have been supplemented with excellent coloured illustrations by John Schmitt showing the bird on the perch from several angles and in flight from above and below the viewer. Just how varied the plumage can get is best illustrated by the fact that Schmitt has devoted one entire plate to the 28 possible different appearances of the Honey Buzzard. The late Salim Ali narrates an interesting episode in his autobiography. In the 1930s, a local brought a dead bird to his camp in the forests of present day Kerala. Salim Ali put it aside thinking it was the well established Common Crested Hawk-eagle. Not till he had returned to the bird-skin’s collection at Bombay did he realise that the bird in fact was the mountain hawk eagle and a very rare occurrence for that part of the country. So despite being large birds, their identity can baffle even the experts. I believe Naoroji’s book had been in the making for 25 years. Little wonder that his text on the biogeography of the subcontinent is so comprehensive and so highly readable that it will rank among the most lucid expositions on the subject. The bar-chart showing species richness of raptors in precise numbers in each biogeographic zone establishes Naoroji’s total mastery of his subject! May be it was for similar attributes of thoroughness that A.O. Hume was fondly called "The Pope" of Indian Ornithology. In the chapter on Raptors in Indian history and mythology, Naoroji makes a convinving case to link Ramayana’s Jatayu to the bearded vulture and Mahabharata’s garuda to the white-bellied sea-eagle. Today, when most species of wildlife are faced with the dire consequences arising from shrinking habitats, unbridled use of chemicals, rampant illicit trade and poaching, Naoroji’s in depth analysis of the problems and counter vailing measures is reassuring. But how to get the powers-that-be to read these home-truths and home-remedies, remains a daunting challenge. For the first time we have a wildlife book which devotes almost half a page to the distribution (range) map of each bird, set in a bold format so that the reader does not have to scout for a magnifying glass. Altogether, the book is a pleasure to read and a delight to possess a copy.
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