Tag Archives: Salim Ali

Book Review | Salim Ali: An unlikely beginning, a great end

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Mumbai, MAHARASHTRA :

It’s the author’s well-founded belief that Salim Ali’s life offers today’s children a role model.

Here’s hope for those young people who are mediocre with mathematics and other studies, and likely to be uninterested in business. Salim (pronounced Saalim, not Saleem) Ali’s interest in birds began to awaken when he shot a male sparrow, standing guard over its mate’s nest, with an air rifle. Next morning he found that another male sparrow had taken its place, and he shot that too… This went on until he had shot eight male sparrows, and then wonderment took the place of whatever had urged him to shoot those sparrows. This wonderment gave his life a foundation of incredible strength. It enabled him to survive the loss of several salaried jobs, and, later, the loss of Tehmina, his wife, who, throughout their 21 years together, supported his efforts wholeheartedly.

This book is his life story, told simply, and for children. It’s the author’s well-founded belief that Salim Ali’s life offers today’s children a role model.

The author makes no effort to sugar-coat the story. Salim’s initial difficulties with academics are covered in some detail, as well as mediocre performance in school, and his inability, found in many others of his extended family, to run a business successfully. This mediocrity at school had nothing to with his powers of observation, though. For example, it was known that the houbara bustard he saw in Sind (now in Pakistan), under normal hot and dry conditions, has a colour that affords perfect camouflage, enabling it to hide easily in the sand. Salim discovered, however, that the bustard’s colour changes in the rains, enabling it to hide in wet sand as well!

Also included is the story of Salim’s relationship with Colonel Richard Meinertzhagen, a former British Intelligence officer. The Colonel’s claims to being a hero might have been authentic, but his claims as an ornithologist were proven false in the 1990s, decades after his death. It illustrates Salim’s naivete with people, but also warns youngsters of the possibility of charlatanry in science.

My favourite story, though, is about Salim’s encounter with a bandit in the summer of 1945. Near the Tibetan border, poking around among the bushes, he saw a bandit armed with a dagger and a rifle. Escape was impossible, so he resorted to a ruse. He had a collapsible chair, a small folding seat on a stick. He pretended that the stick was a rifle barrel, and clicked the folding seat open to give the impression that he was loading and cocking his own rifle. It worked, for the bandit fled.

So here’s proof that commitment, integrity, and hard work — combined with observation, quick thinking, and luck — will get you where a great academic background won’t. A terrific lesson for youngsters, and packaged well, to boot.

The Bird Man of India: Salim Ali for Children

By Zai Whitaker / Hachette / pp. 142; Rs 350

source: http://www.asianage.com / Asian Age / Home> Books / by Shashi Warrier / August 27th, 2023

How India’s birdman, Sálim Ali, showed us the interconnectedness of life

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Mumbai, MAHARASHTRA :

A recent collection of his radio talks point to the stellar role birds play in preserving our environment

Sálim Ali could reach out to a cross-section of society, telling them about birds and the stellar role they play in preserving our environment. (Source: Black Kite)

From busting myths about fireflies lighting up the homes of weaver birds to explaining the whys and hows of the spectacular phenomenon of bird migrations, there has been, perhaps, no one better than Sálim Ali, India’s best-known ornithologist, to demystify the avian world. To Ali’s already formidable list of works, comes another: a collection of his radio talks. Edited by Tara Gandhi, Words for Birds (Black Kite), the book shows him doing what he did best — reaching out to a cross-section of society on birds and the stellar role they play in preserving our environment.

“He was an excellent communicator. He gave a number of lectures and he communicated to people of different professions. For instance, while speaking to mountaineers, he would say — ‘since you go to great heights, to places that ornithologists are not able to go to, look out for nesting sites, for Lammergeiers, the big vultures that are seen in high altitudes. Look around and if you see any birds, let us know, take down notes’. He would talk to people to get out of their own turf or specialisation and become interested in the wider picture,” says Gandhi, who was guided by Ali for her MSc. in field ornithology  shortly before he passed away in 1987, at the age of 90.

India’s birdman, Sálim Ali. (Source: Black Kite)

He was, as she says, ahead of his times in understanding the importance of involving people in conservation. “You will come across one of his talks where he tells his listeners that if you see any unusual birds on the seashore, write to us. This struck me. Nowadays, we talk about citizen science, lay people’s involvement in scientific documentation. A number of bird watchers are specially involved in citizen science — doctors, teachers and people from many other disciplines are making bird lists and sending them to be compiled. A lot of important material comes out of analysing this data . Those days, nearly 60 to 70 years ago, Sálim Ali would urge his readers and listeners to write to the Bombay Natural History Society (BNHS) to record the information.”

Ali who took over the BNHS after Independence and remained with it for decades, was key in keeping the organisation going and in initiating a systematic study of birds. “He had a vision, which was much ahead of his time and very contemporary,” says Gandhi, who has previously edited A Bird’s Eye View: The Collected Essays and Shorter Writings of Sálim Ali (II Volumes, Permanent Black, 2018) and is the author of Birds, Wild Animals and Agriculture: Conflict and Coexistence in India (The Orient Blackswan; 2015).

Tara Gandhi, who has edited ‘Words for Birds’.(Source: Black Kite)

Delivered between 1941 and 1985, Ali’s talks were recorded mainly at the All India Radio (AIR) station in Mumbai and range from one on trends in bird study to talking about bird life for a school broadcast, in conversational Hindustani titled Chand Hairat Angez Parandon aur Janwaron ke Ghar, speaking to children who didn’t speak English. In his autobiography, The Fall of a Sparrow (Oxford University Press, 1985), he recounts his days as a guide lecturer in the Natural History Section of the Prince of Wales Museum in Mumbai, where he remembers particularly enjoying “talking to pupils from the School for the Blind, because of the lively interest they showed.” Gandhi says, “He made an effort to reach out to children to make them understand more about birds and nature in an easy way.”

After his stint at the Museum, Ali spent a year in Germany, training under Erwin Stresemann at the Berlin University Zoological Museum, returning to India in 1930 and launching on a series of bird surveys across the country. Beginning at a time when ornithology, in his own words, was the “Cinderella of Indian Zoology”, Ali can be credited for taking the discipline outside museums and collections and out in the natural habitat and widening its scope. “The kind of projects he undertook later on from the ’60s onwards were extremely important and absolutely pragmatic. He took on a project on birds in the aviation sector, that is bird hazards in aviation. It was a huge project and it was entirely for saving human lives, for preventing huge losses. The study tried to find methods to avoid bird hits on aircraft — observing the time of the day, the trajectory of the birds, which species were involved and how to prevent them from congregating in the airports. Earlier, his surveys were about collections which became a valuable and permanent resource , but later, he moved away completely from the whole idea of merely collecting specimens when he became the head of BNHS,” says Gandhi.

But being dubbed India’ birdman sometimes shadowed his role as a conservationist. “He would say repeatedly that everything is interlinked in nature. It is not just the birds themselves, it is the habitat of the birds and different ecosystems in India he wanted conserved for the sake of all the flora and fauna within them. He spoke about conservation of endangered species and regretted that so many species had died out. Ali was instrumental in getting a number of national parks and protected areas established. Through his communication skills he was even able to persuade royal families to set aside their hunting reserves for conserving the species within them,” says Gandhi.

source: http://www.indianexpress.com / Indian Express / Home> Books and Literature / by Devyani Onial, New Delhi / April 03rd, 2022

Ornithologist Salim Ali’s Forgotten Radio-casts Now Come ‘Alive’ in Book

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Mumbai, MAHARASHTRA :

Ornithologist Dr. Salim Ali’s forgotten radio-casts now come ‘alive’ in a book. /
In memory of Ornithologist Dr Salim Moizuddin Ali.

Dr Salim Moizuddin A. Ali (November 12, 1896-June 20, 1987) was the first Indian to conduct systematic bird surveys across undivided India and even later, and then penned several bird books which popularised ornithology in the sub-continent.

Mumbai :

In a unique initiative, the forgotten radio broadcasts of legendary ornithologist, the late Dr Salim Ali have been compiled and brought ‘alive’ in a book form, which will be released on November 12, marking the 125th birth anniversary of the ‘Birdman of India’.

Dr Salim Moizuddin A. Ali (November 12, 1896-June 20, 1987) was the first Indian to conduct systematic bird surveys across undivided India and even later, and then penned several bird books which popularised ornithology in the sub-continent.

The book — “Words For Birds” — edited by renowned author Tara Gandhi, comprises all the 35 broadcasts of Dr Ali on All India Radio (AIR) — from British India to Independent 1980s — probably unheard of by most people in the current century.

“I had worked with Dr Salim Ali for long… I have even worked on his other papers and documents and I came across these broadcasts that are well-preserved by BNHS,” the book editor Gandhi told IANS briefly, as the book awaits official release.

It will be unveiled as part of the ongoing 125th birth anniversary celebrations of the great ornithologist conferred with the Padma Vibhushan (1976), at the Bombay Natural History Society (BNHS, founded 1883), said Education Officer Raju Kasambe.

The 35 talks that comprise “Words For Birds” were broadcast over 45 years, between 1941-1985, revealing Dr Ali’s exceptional skills both as an oral communicator and a passionate bird propagandist.

“The object of these talks is really to interest listeners, in the first instance for the healthy pleasure and satisfaction bird watching affords rather than for its intrinsic scientific possibilities,” the ornithologist had said of his radio transmissions.

The enthralling radiocasts, in a story-telling style, cover a wide range — bird habits and habitats, risks they face, the crucial role of avian in nature’s cyclic processes, how they benefit agriculture, unseen or little understood contributions to the economy, etc.

On his passion, Dr Ali said how 50 years ago bird watching in India was nowhere as popular, or indeed respectable, as it has become now, and in his younger days he would time and again fall in with persons who left him with a feeling, as they withdrew, that they were inwardly tapping a pitying finger on their foreheads.

“Their first glimpse of me very often was, it is true, of a distinctly shabby khaki-clad individual of the garage mechanic type, wandering leisurely and rather aimlessly about the countryside and surreptitiously peeping into bushes, and holes in tree-trunks and earth banks…” said the legend modestly.

Though he had focussed mainly on birds in his radio talks, it is evident that he was interested in all forms of wildlife and contemporary conservation issues, too, with each talk reading like a short essay, and the reader can even glance randomly through it to be immensely educated and entertained.

Dr Ali’s best-sellers from his massive collection include “Book Of Indian Birds” and the monumental 10-volume “Handbook of the Birds of India and Pakistan” (co-authored with S. Dillon Ripley), “The Birds of Kutch”, “Indian Hill Birds”, “Birds of Kerala”, “The Birds of Sikkim”, and his autobiography, “The Fall of a Sparrow”.

The book editor Gandhi was guided by Dr Ali for MSc (Field Ornithology), and she works for biodiversity conservation, conducts surveys to document birds and other wildlife in India.

Besides scientific and popular articles on nature and ecology, she has penned several books like “Birds, Wild Animals and Agriculture: Conflict and Coexistence in India” and edited the two-volume “A Bird’s Eye View: The Collected Essays and Shorter Writings of Salim Ali”.

Published by Black Kite and Hachette, “Words For Birds” (256 pg/Rs.599) will soon be available from BNHS and Amazon platforms. — IANS

source: http://www.clarionindia.net / Clarion India / Home> India> Life> Books / November 05th, 2021

Why Salim Ali’s ‘The Book of Indian Birds’ is Indian birdwatchers’ favourite guide

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Mumbai, MAHARASHTRA :

Glossier, more attractive birding books have been published in the 80 years since Ali’s guide first appeared, but it remains indispensable.

The first edition of Salim Ali’s book appeared in 1941. (Source: Wikimedia Commons)

It is a small book, my copy of Salim Ali’s The Book of Indian Birds — a hardcover version, bound in green, a mere 187 pages. I have the 1979 edition. The cover is long gone, leaving behind a few tatters of the original, but I am hard put to think of a book I have treasured and used as much. The book and an old pair of Bushnell binoculars acquired some 20 years ago are a part of my essential travelling kit, as essential as a toothbrush and comb.

The first edition of the book appeared in 1941. Jawaharlal Nehru , a keen nature lover, gifted a copy to his daughter while lodged in Dehradun jail.

Ali was quite matter-of-fact in his autobiography, The Fall of a Sparrow. According to him, the book was “acknowledged as largely responsible for creating and fostering much of the interest in birds and birdwatching seen in the country today”. Indeed, for people of a certain generation, no other guide has been valued and loved in the same way, and even among Ali’s other classic works, it is this book that has iconic status among Indian birdwatchers. While setting off on a birding trip, we would ask each other: “Have you taken your Salim Ali?” Or: “Oh, no, I forgot my Salim Ali.” It was always the small green book that we were talking of. It is the essential — the foundational — field guide for Indian birders. It is now in its 13th edition. No other book can take its place.

I came to birdwatching by serendipity. No one on either side of my family was even remotely interested in birds. By a throw of the dice, I was allotted Bharatpur for my district training in the IAS. The Keoladeo Ghana National Park beckoned. I was hooked. Ali, who had done more than anyone alive to create this “Garden of God” out of a Maharaja’s private wetlands reserve, was still alive, and visited a few times while I was there. Two bird guides, Sohan Lal and Bholu Khan, still active today, were being trained by him and other naturalists. They were to mature into fine birding guides, much in demand.

The Book of Indian Birds is where we learned our basic vocabulary of birdwatching. For instance, we learned that “pied” meant black and white, that “rufous” meant reddish-brown as in rust or oxidised iron, and that “fulvous” indicated tawny. Every carefully chosen word signified something. The clarity and the precision of expression meant that in a short half-page entry, we would have all the necessary information about a species. Each write-up was organised around five or six points — size, field characters or appearance, distribution, habits, food, call and nesting. Size was always charmingly described as myna plus, or house crow minus, or with reference to a sparrow, a bulbul or other common bird. Under “field characters”, Ali beautifully and accurately described the appearance: Colour of the feathers, the shape of the bill, silhouette in flight. A crimson-breasted barbet was “heavy-billed”, a blue-throated barbet “a gaudily coloured, dumpy green, arboreal bird” and the common grey hornbill a “clumsy brownish-grey bird”. Birds are described variously as handsome, squat, soft-plumaged, lively, dapper, dainty, spruce, slim, perky, well-groomed. The common roller or blue jay (neelkanth) is described as a “striking, Oxford and Cambridge blue bird”.

People who have always noticed the easy readability of the prose might not be aware that Ali himself gave credit to his wife, Tehmina, for ironing out the “stilted passages” and for “moderating the language”. He did not fail to praise her “remarkable feeling for colloquial English prose style”.

My Salim Ali bears the marks of the trajectory of my life, where I went, what I did. It is not merely well-worn and well-thumbed, with an unravelling spine and precarious binding; it also bears the added signs of pickle stains and tick marks in ink and pencil. Like me, it has seen better days. I know that many bird guides have been subsequently published with much better production values and better colour plates. I am aware that many of the illustrations in the Salim Ali book are decidedly not true to life. For instance, never did a rosy pastor look as pink in real life as it does in the book. But this is mere quibbling. The core and kernel of the book is that it communicates to us so successfully the magical universe of the birds of India.

The international jury which selected Ali for the J Paul Getty Wildlife Conservation Prize of the World Wildlife Fund in 1975 said in its citation: “Your message has gone high and low across the land and we are sure that weaver birds weave your initials in their nests, and swifts perform parabolas in the sky in your honour.”

On his 34th death anniversary on June 20, it is time to remember the book that Ali gave us, which took us on this magical journey to the birds.

This column first appeared in the print edition on June 19, 2021 under the title ‘Birding with Salim Ali’. The writer is a former IAS officer.

source: http://www.indianexpress.com / The Indian Express / Home> Opinion> Columns / by Malovika Pawar / June 19th, 2021

Bird named after Salim Ali

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Mumbai, MAHARASHTRA :

The bird has been described from northeastern India
The bird has been described from northeastern India

Twenty-nine years after the demise Dr. Salim Ali, the birdman of India, an international group of ornithologists named a newly discovered species after him, thus paying homage to the man who shaped generations of ornithologists and also contributed to the better understanding of birds.

Himalayan Forest Thrush, Zoothera salimalii, thus goes the name of the species, which has been described from northeastern India and adjacent parts. The research team that identified the species included scientists from Sweden, India, China, the U.S., and Russia.

Earlier, a bat species — Salim Ali’s fruit bat — that was first collected from Western Ghats region of Theni district, Tamil Nadu, was named after the legendary ornithologist.

The present study was initiated in June 2009 by Per Alström of Uppsala University, Sweden and Shashank Dalvi of the Alumnus of the Post Graduate Program, Wildlife Conservation Society- National Centre for Biological Sciences, Bangalore, while studying birds at high elevations of Western Arunachal Pradesh. The researchers had discovered that there were two species of Plain-backed Thrush breeding in sympathy in Arunachal Pradesh, India. These were completely “segregated by elevation and habitat, one occurring in mostly coniferous forest up to the upper tree limit and the other in alpine habitats above the tree limit. Their songs were strikingly different, although no definite morphological differences were detected in the field.”

The research findings were published in Avian Research.

According to the researchers, “it was realised that what was considered as a single species, the Plain-backed Thrush Zoothera mollissima, was in fact two different species in northeastern India. While the Plain-backed Thrush in the coniferous and mixed forest had a rather musical song, those individuals found in the same region, but on bare rocky habitats above the tree-line had a much harsher, scratchier, unmusical song.”

The studies of “specimens from 15 museums in seven countries revealed consistent differences in plumage and structure between birds from these two populations. It was confirmed that the species breeding in the forests of the eastern Himalayas had no scientific name. Later, the new species was named as Himalayan Forest Thrush Zoothera salimalii. The high-elevation Plain-backed Thrush is now renamed as Alpine Thrush while it retains the scientific name of Zoothera mollissima,” said a communication.

The analysis of plumage, structure, song, DNA and ecology from throughout the range of the Plain-backed Thrush revealed that a third species was present in central China, which was already known. This was treated as a subspecies of Plain-backed Thrush and was called as Sichuan Forest Thrush. The song of the Sichuan Forest Thrush was found to be even more musical than the song of the Himalayan Forest Thrush, the communication said.

source: http://www.thehindu.com / The Hindu / Home>  Sci-Tech / by K. S. Sudhi / January 24th, 2016