Dec 13 2024 to Dec 13 2024 6:30 p.m.

Where

Bangalore International Centre

7 4th Main Rd, Stage 2, Domlur 560071

Event Description

To find a rare bird is the ultimate dream of ornithologists and birdwatchers. But doing it requires a combination of skills including an understanding of habitats, animal behaviour and people skills as well as plain old good luck. But the ornithologists, naturalists and birdwatchers, who tracked down the most difficult to find birds of the Indian subcontinent, got lucky because they worked really hard at it. In this session authors Shashank Dalvi and Anita Mani will be in conversation with contributors to the book ‘The Search for India’s Rarest Birds‘, Atul Jain, Radhika Raj and Aasheesh Pittie who will be speaking about the challenges of species discovery and what makes a bird ‘rare’. In addition, the session will explore conservation issues and solutions to prevent such rare species from going over the brink, as well as future directions on where the next raft of discoveries could come from. 

Speakers

Shashank Dalvi Author, Researcher & Conservationist

Shashank Dalvi is a researcher and conservationist with more than 25 years of field experience and immense knowledge of India’s natural history. His work has led to the discovery of a new bird species in India, only the fourth such discovery since independence. Shashank has also been instrumental in the conservation of Amur Falcons in Nagaland, for which he won the Carl Zeiss Conservation Award in 2014. His recent work focuses on understanding the impact of biogeographic barriers on the population genetics of birds.

Anita Mani Author & Editor

Anita Mani lives, works and birds in Delhi, from where she runs Indian Pitta, her book imprint with Juggernaut Books. In addition to editing books about birds and natural history, Anita writes on technology and communications, a throwback to the time she ran the operations of a communications software company. Her work journey is similar to that of a migrating bird – she has oscillated from writing (first for the Hindu Business Line, and later Business Standard) to a corporate career and back to writing. For several years, she ran a news and current affairs publication for children called Child Friendly News. For now, she is content to watch, read and write about birds.

Aasheesh Pittie Birder, Bibliographer & Author

Aasheesh Pittie is a birder, bibliographer and author. He is a co-founder of Indian BIRDS (indianbirds.in) and edited it for its first nineteen years. He is happiest among stacks of books in libraries, or outdoors, experiencing nature. He has created the Bibliography of South Asian Ornithology (southasiaornith.in), a free online database which is also now on the Zotero platform under the same title. His ongoing work is An Author Bibliography of South Asian Ornithology, 1713–2022 is also online: https://linktr.ee/indiancourser. Besides, he has authored Birds in Books: Three Hundred Years of South Asian Ornithology: A Bibliography (Permanent Black, 2010), The Written Bird: Birds in Books 2 (Indian BIRDS Monograph 4,2022) and The Living Air: The Pleasures of Birds and Birdwatching (Juggernaut, 2023).

Radhika Raj Researcher, Writer & Editor

Radhika Raj has worked as a researcher, writer and editor for over a decade. She has written for some of India’s leading publications, including the Hindustan Times, the Indian Express and the National Geographic Traveller. She is currently the deputy editor at Roundglass Sustain, where she writes and edits stories and scripts on India’s biodiversity. She is also a South Asia Speaks (2024) fellow and is pursuing a project that chronicles the lost wildernesses of undivided Punjab. Radhika has a master’s in Sociology from the Delhi School of Economics and an MPhil from the Tata Institute of Social Sciences. In her previous life, she worked as an ethnographer, chronicling everyday life and violence along a city’s margins.

Atul Jain Birder

Atul Jain has been birding for the last 24 years, a sport he got into by accident. On a BNHS trip to Dudhwa National Park (Lakhimpur District, Uttar Pradesh) in 1999, to watch tigers, he happened to see an Emerald Dove. And he was smitten! The resplendent colours, beauty and shyness of the bird enchanted him to no end, and in that moment, he became a birdwatcher. When this turned into a chase game for numbers (twitching) is not known, but it seems that this bug had always been there. It is reflected in his collections of bird memorabilia, banknotes, stamps, lithographs, paintings and even betel nut crackers among many other sundry items. Atul thinks that if not for birding, he wouldn’t have had the chance to visit the remote places in India and experience the magic of forests, wildlife, culture and food.