Review of Aasheesh Pittie’s The Living Air: A philosophy for birdwatching

“The landscapes around us grow emptier and quieter each passing year. We need hard science to establish the rate and scale of these declines, to work out why it is occurring… but we need literature, too; we need to communicate what the losses mean… Literature can teach us the qualitative texture of the world. And we need it to,” writes Helen Macdonald in her book of nature essays, Vesper Flights.

There are many guidebooks available that tell us how to identify wildlife, which birding hotspots or tiger reserves to visit, and which trails to walk in. But there are few Indian nature books which explain what the pursuit of birds and nature really means. Close to Macdonald’s perspective, Aasheesh Pittie’s The Living Air goes beyond making bird lists and cataloguing must-see destinations for birds. Instead, slowly and carefully, the book presents a philosophy for birdwatching — the author’s lifelong pursuit — and how it adds value to life.

Quiet observation

Featuring short chapters on birds or places he visits (and re-visits), Pittie demonstrates that birdwatching is not about acquisition. Many may understand birdwatching as lugging heavy gear in exotic destinations to shoot a perfect portrait of a rare bird. Instead, Pittie suggests that birdwatching is about quietly observing what is around you, taking notes, and in celebrating even common avians. As a wildlife rich country blessed with over 1300 bird species, there are many rare storks, woodpeckers, hornbills and bustards that are on the must-see lists of birders around the world. For instance, the last viable global populations of the Great Indian Bustard are in India — now found in desert-like stretches of Gujarat and Rajasthan. Only a single area in Arunachal Pradesh hosts the dainty, colourful Bugun liocichla, and the incredibly beautiful Great Hornbill is becoming rarer to spot.

Yet, Pittie makes a fine point by focusing on what is close by, common and crisscrossing his life. He makes no distinctions between the rare bird and the one you may see every other day. The idea is to value everything nature has to offer, even that which appears mundane. In a chapter on Dabchicks (Little grebes) near the Golconda fort, he notices the birds and their “clockwork” movements in the water, and wonders how long it will be before land sharks gobble up the wetlands the Dabchicks daub their bodies in.

Valuable natural history

It is in these portions that the book becomes a valuable natural history record in documenting that which we easily miss. We travel to see a fort or savour a plate of regional food, but not a nameless wetland near that fort. “Exploration of everyday natural sites is important too,” and this is scaffolded by what the author believes creates a good birdwatcher. The ability to not behave like paparazzi, and place the bird first. Birdwatching is about being invisible, he writes, “in such a way that the frozen statues of animate wildlife, interrupted by your brashness, are coaxed into resuming their activities.”

The book covers sparrows, nightjars, ioras, owls, and seeing the extremely rare Jerdon’s Courser with ornithologist Richard Grimmett. My only grouse with The Living Air is that with its incipient gentle pace, 47 chapters are one too many. Instead, the book would have benefited from deeper dive, longer chapters. A longish chapter on seeing the Shikra and the beginnings of the Birdwatchers’ Club of Andhra Pradesh pans out nicely, both in covering the bird and their watchers. More of this would have been excellent.

Still, this is a rare, knowledgeable and tender look at birds. The meander of thoughts, spots and themes the book presents is akin to an atlas of the author’s life, whose pitstops are feathered dinosaurs. “Two dark, serendipitous orbs gazed down at me, riveting in their serenity,” writes Pittie of the eyes of the Mottled Wood Owl. I feel the same way about this book — its sharpness lies in how still and centred it is; for a nature-deprived world, this work should be Vitamin N.

The Living Air; Aasheesh Pittie, Indian Pitta (Juggernaut), ₹599.

The reviewer is a conservation biologist and author of Wild and Wilful-Tales of 15 Iconic Indian Species.