Are you a birder, a birdwatcher or an ornithologist? If you want to know the difference between these, read Birds in your Backyard and Beyond (published by Red Panda). Co-written by well-known authors Mamta Nainy and Arthy Muthanna Singh and Kaustubh Srikanth, Senior Programme Officer with World Wide Fund for Nature India (WWF India), the book is not about birds per se but about how anyone can learn to “enjoy the experience of birdwatching”, as Kaustubh puts it.
(From left) Kaustubh Srikanth, Mamta Nainy and Arthy Muthanna Singh
The idea for the book came when “the Environment Education division in WWF India wanted to engage young children below 18 years through an activity book, says Kaustubh who compiled the contents. This was where Mamta and Arthy came on board or rather “jumped” at it. “More often than not, birdwatching is considered a slightly highbrow hobby”, says Mamta, “and can get a little intimidating with all the nomenclatures. But essentially, watching birds is something that we all do quite naturally. What’s needed, perhaps, is to get excited about birds and be more involved with observing them.”
Once they had a draft ready, they “batted it back and forth with Kaustubh and the larger team at WWF until we agreed on the format and the content”. Illustrator Aniruddha Mukherjee, says Mamta, interpreted the text visually and “lent an informal layer with his illustrations.”
A checklist of all the stuff you need
The book is more of a guide to being a birdwatcher. It answers questions like What if I don’t have a backyard/garden?; What’s the best time? and What to wear? and also how to use one’s eyes and ears to the best effect.
Kaustubh explains that they started with introducing bird watching and moved on to where and what to observe. Mamta adds that they did not want the book to sound like a field guide or talk down to children. “We wanted it to be like a conversation with a friend who’s talking about her favourite hobby,” say both Arthy and Mamta. Which is why the character of Bini the bird nerd was introduced.
An activity sheet to help identify birds
The two authors explain that the chapters were organised on the basis of “clues that help readers make connections between the birds they know and the less familiar ones. We did not want the readers to hurry through the book but wanted them to spend time with each section, looking at the illustrations and soaking in all the details — just like the act of birdwatching itself. So interactive worksheets, projects, drawing activities were added. The last section talks about bird conservation. The book comes at a time when India is going though the worst environmental crisis in its environmental history, so we hope that the book encourages readers to get more involved in conservation efforts.”
Despite all this, they had to leave out a few things, “like bird taxonomy,” says Kaustubh, “how birds are classified, and some adaptations. But we want children to explore Nature and learn about these as they move forward in their journey.” Mamta and Arthy see the book as “an invitation to readers to put their video games, smartphones or TV remotes down and just look around. So the basics of birdwatching — identifying birds by colour, shape, field marks, sounds, habitat — have been addressed in an informative but manageable brief instead of giving a mountain of data.”
- Kaustubh talks about learning from the Indian Pond Heron, “which has adapted to living around urban areas. It utilises leftover food like rotis and bread to bait its fish. The fish happily feeds on the bread only to fall into the trap of the heron. This taught me a lesson of not wasting food and making the best use of opportunities around you.”
- Arthy learnt how the pecking order worked by watching a bird bath in her childhood home. “Watching from a distance, I noticed how the House Sparrows, the tiny Sunbirds and Pied Bushchats gave way to the larger Red-vented Bulbul.”
- Mamta’s thrill came from a challenge to herself: “to identify a few new birds each week. I can’t tell you how excited and proud I was when I could identify a coppersmith barbet by its call and spotted it on the topmost branch of a tree next door, hiccuping ‘tok-tok-tok’ with a strange movement of its head!”
All of them have personal takeaways from working on this book. “When we were young, we never had someone take us through a journey to explore Nature,” says Kaustubh. “I have enjoyed writing and engaging with the children to help them understand their local biodiversity.” For Arthy, who grew up on a tea plantation in Ooty and now lives in Gurugram, working on the book brought back memories of a time “when birds could be spotted everywhere” and of birding trips.
After this book, “I started noticing so many birds right outside my balcony. Being on the third floor of an apartment complex means a perfect bird’s eye view of the trees the birds frequent. And hopefully I’ll soon be the birder I used to be.” Mamta had been a dormant birdwatcher but the book made her realise that “I just hadn’t been paying attention. When I really started ‘looking’, I started seeing birds everywhere.”
