What birdwatching can teach us about evolution, ecology and humanity

'The Search for India's Rarest Birds' is a compendium of thrilling first-person narratives by all manner of birders

- Chandrahas Choudhury

When it comes to birds, India has always been a superpower. Among countries with the greatest number of bird species, India, with its wide repertoire of climates and habitats, ranks ninth in the world.

Historically, our architecture and land management (the chabutros or pigeon towers of old Ahmedabad and Mumbai; the planting of fruit-bearing trees for frugivorous birds) always acknowledged that birds are an essential part of our lives; our songs and myths and stories are highly marked by avian presence. How could they not? At last count, India was home to 1,358 species of birds—about one-eighth of global bird diversity.

Yet in the here and now of our own tumultuous century, in the high noon of the Anthropocene age, it is possible to discern a paradox emerging in our relationship to birds. Even as bird populations are declining rapidly in India—their habitats rapidly degraded by deforestation and urbanization, their diets and reproductive systems disrupted by agrochemicals—the last 25 years have seen a great explosion in birdwatching in India.

Birding and "twitching" (the pursuit of rare bird sightings) are now mass pastimes, fueled by the wide availability of information about birds and birdwatching hot spots on the internet, internet and social media platforms like eBird and Facebook birdwatching groups, and the democratization of bird photography through mobile phones. The comprehensive, if troubling, State of India's Birds report of 2023, for example, generates its insights from a repository of more than 30 million observations uploaded on the eBird website by over 30,000 birdwatchers.