Salim Ali: The Birdman of India

Salim Ali was India’s best-known bird scientist, called an ornithologist. His life began with one small sparrow and a string of setbacks.

1. What did a yellow-throated sparrow have to do with it?

A single sparrow set the course of his life. Salim Ali was born in Mumbai in 1896 and lived until 1987. He lost both parents by the age of three. His aunt and uncle raised him.

As a boy he shot birds with a Daisy air gun. One bird had a yellow patch on its throat. He took it to the Bombay Natural History Society (BNHS). A staff member named W.S. Millard identified it as a yellow-throated sparrow.

Millard then showed the boy the Society’s stuffed birds and lent him books.

2. Why did he never earn a higher degree?

He struggled with mathematics, so he gave up the usual route to a degree. He dropped out of college after one year. In 1919 he went to Tavoy, Burma, to manage the family’s tungsten mining and timber business.

The forests there sharpened his eye for birds. The business later failed. He returned to Bombay, and Father Blatter of St. Xavier’s College guided him to finish a degree in zoology.

He then applied to be ornithologist at the Zoological Survey of India. He was turned down.

3. How did Berlin and a village on the coast shape him?

Berlin gave him the training that India could not. No Indian school taught scientific ornithology then. So he trained at the Zoological Museum in Berlin under Professor Erwin Stresemann. He called Stresemann his guru for life.

In 1926 he had first worked as a guide lecturer at the Prince of Wales Museum in Bombay. After Berlin he settled at Kihim, a coastal village. In 1930 he studied the breeding of the baya weaver bird there.

That was the first serious study of bird behaviour in India.

Salim Ali crossed the country with a notebook, a pencil and binoculars. His surveys fed a shelf of books that taught India to watch birds.

4. How did his bird surveys work?

Each bird survey had a target. The Berar survey looked for the white-fronted tree pie. The Hyderabad survey searched for Jerdon’s courser. That bird was later found again in Cuddapah district.

Princely rulers paid for most of this work. The surveys covered Hyderabad, Travancore and Cochin, Central India, Mysore, Kutch and Gujarat. They ran from the early 1930s to the 1940s, and later surveys followed.

He needed little equipment: a notebook, binoculars and a sharp mind.

5. Which books made bird watching popular?

The Book of Indian Birds, first printed in 1941, made bird watching popular. It is now in its 13th edition and has a Hindi translation. BNHS says it brought many Indians to birds.

Many surveys became books. These include The Birds of Kutch (1945), The Birds of Sikkim (1962) and The Birds of Kerala. Kerala’s book started as The Birds of Travancore and Cochin in 1953.

Each book turned survey notes into a guide for ordinary readers.

6. What is the Handbook of the Birds of India and Pakistan?

It is a ten-volume reference on the birds of the subcontinent. Salim Ali wrote it with the American scientist S. Dillon Ripley. Work ran from 1964 to 1974, often written 1964-74.

The two men split the task. Ripley focused on naming and classifying birds, called taxonomy. Ali focused on how birds live, called ecology. Scientists still use it today, more than 40 years later.

BNHS calls it his masterpiece.

7. How did he treat money and students?

He lived simply and guarded every rupee of public money. Except for a short job in 1927, he took no salary until he became a National Professor of Ornithology in the 1980s. He spent grants on collecting and study.

He also taught. The University of Bombay named the BNHS a research institute, with Ali as research guide. He gave his students freedom and guided them through talks.

He left his Getty prize money to the Society for scholarships.

Salim Ali used his standing to protect habitats. Two cases stand out, one in Rajasthan and one in Kerala.

8. How did he help create Keoladeo National Park?

His efforts helped protect a famous wetland at Bharatpur in Rajasthan. The old royal duck-shooting reserve was called the Ghana. After independence, the ruler handed it to the Rajasthan government on Ali’s urging.

Rajasthan notified it as a bird sanctuary on 13 March 1956. It became a national park in August 1981. In October 1981 it joined the Ramsar list, a global list of key wetlands. UNESCO, the UN’s culture and science agency, gave it World Heritage status in 1985.

9. Why is Keoladeo important for birds?

It is a winter home for huge flocks of water birds. The park is the only wintering ground in India for the central population of the Siberian crane. More than 350 bird species have been recorded there.

Ali praised the Ghana for another reason. Bird watching there lasts half a year or more at a stretch. Most places offer only a short season.

10. What was the Silent Valley fight?

Silent Valley is a rainforest in Kerala that was almost drowned by a dam. In the 1970s the Kerala State Electricity Board planned a hydroelectric project on the Kunthipuzha river. Protests followed.

Many eminent Indians wrote to the Centre to scrap it. They included Salim Ali, M.S. Swaminathan and Madhav Gadgil. The project was scrapped in November 1983.

The area became a national park on 15 November 1984. It was formally opened in September 1985.

11. Why is Silent Valley called silent?

The forest lacks the loud insects that fill most forests. Cicadas are absent here. Their constant noise is a feature of other forests. So the valley is comparatively quiet.

The valley is part of the core of the Nilgiri Biosphere Reserve. Kerala Tourism lists more than 170 bird species and a rare monkey, the lion-tailed macaque.

Honours reached him late but in large numbers. Institutions, a day and even a bird now carry his name.

12. Which honours did he receive?

India gave him the Padma Bhushan in 1958 and the Padma Vibhushan in 1976. The President presented the Padma Vibhushan on 3 April 1976. These are India’s third and second highest civilian awards.

The Asiatic Society’s Gold Medal mattered most to him. It was the first recognition of ornithology for an Indian. Three universities gave him a doctor of science (DSc) degree: Aligarh, Delhi and Andhra.

In 1975 he won the Paul Getty prize for wildlife conservation.

13. What carries his name today?

A research centre, a bird and a national day carry his name. The Sálim Ali Centre for Ornithology and Natural History (SACON) was set up in 1990 at Anaikatty, near Coimbatore. It works under the environment ministry.

A bird found in 2016, the Himalayan forest thrush, was named after him. His birthday, 12 November, is marked as National Bird Day.

Questions on him usually test names, places and years. Learn the pairs below.

14. Which pairs and traps should you remember?

Match each fact to its place or person. Salim Ali and birds go together. M.S. Swaminathan is known for farm science, though he signed the Silent Valley letter too.

Bharatpur Bird Sanctuary and Keoladeo National Park are the same place. World Heritage status came in 1985. Silent Valley is in Kerala, and its national park dates from 1984.

His 1985 memoir is called The Fall of a Sparrow. The title echoes a line in Hamlet about a special providence in the fall of a sparrow.