Feathers in his Cap

Edited by Shanthi and Ashish Chandola

Publisher: Aleph Books

Pages: 328

Price: Rs 595

Good books,like a bird photograph showing everything in perfect focus,are precious. Great books,elevating the experience to a joyous avian ode to eye-glint,frozen movement and individual character,are priceless. Of Birds and Birdsong,a painstakingly compiled,immaculately edited collection of the writings of eminent naturalist Madhaviah Krishnan,belongs to the latter category. It is not just a good “bird book”,for like Krishnan,it cannot be exactly categorised. But it is among the finest collections of prose I have ever read on birds,birdsong and the natural world.

Krishnan writes about birds with laconic wit,as one would about intimate companions. Echoing Gerald Durrell (and Kenneth Anderson),he writes of growing up in the open spaces of Mylapore: “…I used to wander around with a catapult in my hand and a jackknife in my hip pocket,feeling every inch a settler in a new land.” His meticulous description of birds,specifically quails and rain quails,echoes Salim Ali. And yet he is much more — a pioneer in a largely unsupervised,peerless league of his own.

Krishnan’s prose is lucidly innocent of the stilted vocabulary of his diverse careers at Associated Printers,the Madras School of Arts,All India Radio and in the princely kingdom of Sandur — in modern Bellary — where he served as schoolteacher,judge,publicity officer and political secretary. Nor is it detached and jargonised,or journalistic,though he wrote a popular column in the Statesman. Shanthi and Ashish Chandola note in their introduction,“His work stands out as uniquely original,combining acute and systematic observation,depth of knowledge and understanding of nature.”

Most of his pen portraits and sketches of birds,splendidly reproduced here by Soumen Chakravorty,are so vividly detailed they could belong in the finest field guides. About the spot-billed duck,he writes: “Seen at hand,the dark bill which is a bright chrome yellow over a third of its length (at the tip-end) and with an orange-vermilion spot on top of the upper mandible on either side of its median line,the grey body patterned in scale-like plumage,and the orange legs are wholly distinctive and unmistakable.”

This was written in the 1950s when there were no digital cameras or the internet. All that Krishnan had was binoculars,half-a-dozen expensive and rare books on birds,and hours and hours spent in the field,day after day. His pioneering nature photographs were taken “often with a camera that he had constructed himself using bits and parts brought for him by friends,or picked up from some obscure shop in Madras….”

As someone who had a brief and failed affair shooting birds with film and nowadays spends a lot of time peering at them through a DSLR’s viewfinder,I could only marvel at the effort (and heartbreak) Krishnan must have endured. Yet,the only time he talks about it is when he recounts (very self-deprecatingly,in keeping with his times) how,in spite of painstakingly setting amidst “waist-deep and singularly filthy” water,he couldn’t make much of an “opportunity,to be seized by forelock,mane or tail,for a truly unique photograph”.

Wildlife (and bird) photography is an exacting,error-prone,time-consuming,back-breaking line,even these days,with the best camera gear. Imagine what it must have been like more than half a century ago. In awe of Krishnan’s exploits,I can only quote Blake: “Did he who made the lamb make thee?”

Krishnan was widely read. He quoted Coleridge,Wordsworth and Keats,and their Tamil and Indian peers to illustrate his points,puzzle out the etymology (and onomatopoeia) of bird names and muse on the prominence of birds and birdsong in Indian and English cultures. His keen mind and naturalist’s eye (and ear) are at work when he explains why the parakeet is classified as a songbird in spite of its unpleasant calls: “…but the hen calling its nestlings has a different voice altogether,a long,low,sweet trill,tremulous with tenderness and affection.”

Krishnan writes about all kinds of birds — common urban varieties (like Satyajit Ray and Ruskin Bond,he is fascinated by crows),common but elusive owlets and shikras,and the wild exotics like coppersmiths,peregrines,white-bellied sea eagles,goldenbacked woodpeckers and shamas — which many would give an arm and a leg to sight and photograph. No matter how “common”,birds become in Krishnan’s hands as special as protagonists in a grand novel,with writerly regard for anthropomorphism. “The Indian robin hunts efficiently,but with an airiness that,alas,so rarely goes with efficiency. It is beautifully balanced in every movement,betraying no hint of the jerky,fidgety energy of most small birds. Only,its tail keeps fanning out,and closing,and wagging,like a thing endowed with independent animation. Give me creatures that wag their tails – they have joyous hearts.”

Elsewhere,he writes of the wagtail: “It is all a matter of tails. If it could jerk its tail right over its head,and fan it out as the magpie robin does,no doubt it would sing as wildly and wonderfully,but being only a wagtail,it is content with its modest,sweet little song.” And of the hoopoe: “I used to know a Mahratta head-mali,with decided ideas on seemliness. He would come to work in a crisply starched khaki coat and a magnificent tiger-striped mull and was superior to messy digging or work on rough shrubs — such things he left to underlings. Each day he would spend hours on the lawn,quartering it systematically to locate weeds,inspecting each blade of grass with a dignified,critical decline of his beturbaned head. I have never seen a man look and behave more like a hoopoe.”

Krishnan praises Salim Ali (with whom,according to Zafar Futehally’s foreword,he disagreed a lot) by comparing him to a king crow that fiercely guards the tree where it nests,allowing other birds to nest and prosper in safety there. Krishnan was fiercely patriotic about the uniqueness of India’s natural history. He championed the safe-keeping of Indian species and disliked exotic imports that shrank bird habitats. If we had had more like him,our “forests” wouldn’t be eucalyptus and our shrubbery just clumps of lantana!

Brought out on Krishnan’s birth centenary,Of Birds and Birdsong will be as welcome as birdsong’s lilt to many – to the birdwatcher laden with field guides and binoculars,the bird photographer lugging a tripod and heavy lens,the nature lover and the connoisseur of natural history.

Anand Vishwanadha is a poet,indie publisher,bird photographer and naturalist