Lost and Found

A new anthology of essays on the quest to find birds that haven't been spotted for decades

- Vrushal Pendharkar

THE SEARCH FOR INDIA'S RAREST BIRDS

Edited by Shashank Dalvi and Anita Mani JUGGERNAUT

₹499; 280 pages

In 2021, a couple of years before the terrible ethnic conflict started in Manipur, the state threw up some of the most reliable sites to see one of India’s stunning but rare pheasants. Named evocatively as ‘Nong-in’ in the Meitei language, it means ‘one who follows the tracks of the rain’. Also known as Mrs. Hume’s pheasant to the English-speaking world, it is named after the wife of the temperamental but prodigious ornithologist Allan Octavian Hume.