Saving the Songs

With over 1,200 species, India has long been a land alive with birdsong. This discussion will explore why our birds are slipping away, lost to vanishing habitats, pesticide use, hunting, and to the hard lines of power cables and dams that redraw the land. What might it take to keep them here?

Some absences, like that of the Great Indian Bustard and White-bellied Heron, are stark. But others are quieter, easier to miss. Birds once “common,” like drongos and rollers, no longer gather as they did. Nightjars call less often from the forest’s edge. And the dawn chorus, once a bright, swelling…