What
birds and
fauna in various
regions of India
are like can be learnt in a nutshell from this book. To depict the variety of
birds as wide and as varied as India’s various regions themselves, Zafar
Futehally, a renowned and dedicated ornithologist, has assembled and edited 19
essays to cover regions of the Western Ghats, the Deccan, the Coastal Belts,
the Indo-Gangetic plane, the Himalayas, the arid regions of Rajasthan and the
lesser known areas of the North East. The essays also give on birds habituating
in major cities like Delhi, Mumbai, Chennai,
Pune, Guwahati and Jamnagar.
The readers get a sensible over-view with a right perspective and thus can
especially prove valuable to novices into the field of studying birds in their
proper contexts.
These essays do
not merely list the birds that are found in these areas but they go a lot
beyond to tell the readers why and how the particular species are mainly there,
what their living conditions are and what does the future holds for them. The
writers of these essays are noted
ornithologists themselves and include Prakash
Gole (Pune and other cities), Abdul Jamil Urfi (Indo-Gangetic wetlands), Hashim
Tyabji (Madhya Pradesh), Aasheesh Pittie (Andhra Pradesh) and Lavkumar Khacher
(Himalayas). There is an interesting and
useful essay of garden birds too; it is by the book’s editor Zafar Futehally.
Beside essays
on region-wise birds, there are write ups on specific themes such as
endangered birds of India
(Asad R. Rahmani), the behaviour of
peafowl (George B. Schell) and on raptors
(Rishd Naoroji).
Thus we can now
get the ‘ornithologists’ eye-view of the bewildering world of Indian birds made
up of around 1300 species. And this view is as pleasurable as watching and
living amidst the birds themselves and improving the quality of one’s own life.
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