Sanctuary | Technology
Birding and ornithology in India
has come a long way since its inception
during the British era. During that
period of enormous discoveries, there
were new bird species to describe, and
information to collect. This resulted in
the fi rst-recorded baseline data for
species distributions. Until date, it is
this information that is still being used
in our fi eld guides. In fact, the early
ornithologists did such a thorough job in
those 150 or so years, that just four new
species have been described since India’s
independence in 1947. The bulk of the
credit goes to naturalists such as
A. O. Hume, T. C. Jerdon, Edward Blyth,
Brian Hodgson, Samuel Tickell, John
Gould and some others who were active
between the mid-1800s and early 1900s.
Post-Independence, there continued
to be interest in birds but it was
lacklustre with nothing very exciting to
report. However, in the last 15 years,
birding has undergone a transformation
and is evolving at a breathtaking pace.
Before 1999, the most reliable source of
information was in Dr. Sálim Ali’s and Sir
Dillon Ripley’s 10 volumes of Handbook
of the Birds of India and Pakistan. One
couldn’t carry these tomes to the fi eld,
and identifi cation was an exhausting
process. In my early days of birding, I
remember heading out to the Bombay
Natural History Society (BNHS) library
after spending a day in the fi eld. I
would take extensive fi eld notes on all
the characteristics I could observe and
then pore through these volumes to
try and identify my sightings. If that
wasn’t conclusive, I would explore the
BNHS’ skin collections to confi rm the
identifi cation. I must say, while it was
time consuming, it was also a great
learning process.As I write this, a quarter of the
world’s population – around 1.8 billion –
are aged between 15 and 30. This
young demographic is driving the rapid
adoption of digital technologies with
much more information available at one’s
fi ngertips. Now is the time for birding to
become ubiquitous and not remain
limited to a small elite group. This
became even more clearer to me when
I successfully completed my Big Year in
2015, observing a record 1,128 species on
a shoe-string budget. To implement this
vision, I came up with the idea of a mobile
application called Vannya, designed to
bring the entire birding community – both
novice and experienced birders – on a
single platform.
Vannya is free to download and has
been carefully designed to ensure ease
of use by even novice birders. Unique
features of the app include The Bird
of the Day, Top Trending Bird and the
coverage of all popular taxonomies of
the Bird List. It also features bird size
references for every species along
with basic ecological and taxonomic
information. Further, we are expecting
to release two enhancements in the near
future. These future versions of Vannya
create an exciting roadmap for seasoned
birders with features such as bird
vocalisations that can also be used offl ine,
bird distributions, habitats, elevations,
identifi cation features to help identify
particular bird species, and more.
A team of biologists and engineers
have been working really hard over the
past one year to create this application.
All the concepts that we visualised
on the white board, were realised as
software codes in the application. We
have a long-term vision for Vannya
and are working
towards a platform
that educates
more people about
India’s rich natural
heritage besides
helping birders,
scientists, and the
conservationists
network. In the
long run, we also
hope that Vannya
will enable the
birding community
to act as eyes
and ears for
conservation. BThen came modern day fi eld-
guides by Grimmett, Kazmierczak
and Rasmussen, which made bird
identifi cation easier. All three were
easy to use and included updated
information. In addition to these,
the creation of e-groups such as
bngbirds and birdsofbombay allowed
much exchange of information
over the Internet. Webpages such
as http://www.kolkatabirds.com, http://www.
orientalbirdimages.org served
as extremely useful databases.
Simultaneously two developments in
India in the early 2000s – the IT boom
and the arrival of digital cameras –
triggered a massive surge of interest
for birding and bird photography. This
has led to a bias favouring photography
over birding in India and other
Southeast Asian countries.
Over the past decade, birding has
become even more digital in India with
the appearance of recording equipment,
although these were an integral part of
birding in Western countries. Websites
such as http://www.xenocanto.org are
extremely popular among birders for
both locating birds in the wild and for
identifying them. Then came Facebook
that led to the formation of many
birding and wildlife groups; for example,
Indian Birds with nearly 1,12,000
members and Sanctuary Asia with
nearly 1,48,000 members. One also has
recourse to powerful platforms such as
ebird with much global scope and reach.
However, there are still a few
challenges. Reliable fi eld guides are
expensive and still too bulky to carry
around in the fi eld. There are not more
than three to four illustrations of each
species in these fi eld-guides. They
also lack bird vocalisations. Some fi eld
guides (in PDF format) do contain bird
vocalisations, but fi le sizes are heavy
and take up a lot of space in the phone
memory. We still do not have enough
information handy, when it comes to
elevations of bird species. Along with
bird vocalisations, distinct identifi cation
features and behaviour, elevation
also plays a very important role. For
example, if one notices a Leaf Warbler
in the mid-elevations of the eastern
Himalaya with identifi cation features
such as distinct crown stripe, two
wing-bars, fl eshy bill, and alternate
fl icking of wings, then it is most likely to
be a Blyth’s Leaf Warbler.SCAN HERE TO
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