It’s a bird’s life

Hovering above the placid lake water, an Osprey could be missed for just another fish-eating raptor. But this raptor knows its physics and biology lessons well — it has the eye to spot that fish under water, it has the precision to plan and launch that attack, and it has talons to ensure the prey doesn’t escape its grasp! At the end of this thrilling inning, the Osprey will devour its hard-earned meal perched on a branch.

It is these characteristics and behaviour patterns that come alive in Rohan Chakravarty’s ‘Bird Business’, where he sketches portraits of more than 100 bird species. Delightful illustrations explain their quirks and daily drama. The accompanying short pieces marry humour and scientific data, making it fun to read.

The illustrator and author of several books on nature and wildlife, Chakravarty has been a hobby bird watcher for 20 years. While today information on birds is readily available on Google and apps, one depended on field guides when he started out. This cursory knowledge wasn’t enough for Chakravarty. “I always wanted to know what birds do, where they fit into the larger scheme of things in nature, what they mean to us and what we mean to them. This book is a result of these gaps.”

The book was first published by Bombay Natural History Society in 2019. When BNHS was unable to republish and restock it, Chakravarty came out with this revised edition (published by Juggernaut) that has three new illustrated sequences and a new cover.

The illustrations are beautiful, painstakingly detailed, and “chirpy and sprightly”, as ecologist and author TR Shankar Raman writes in the Introduction. You find an Asian Green Bee-Eater hunting its prey, which should ideally mean a bee, but goes for any “winged tidbit”. A series of illustrations catch all the action — the sharp twists and turns it takes in pursuit of the prey; its long tail and wire-like extensions aiding its aerial acrobatics. Another montage captures how a Pied Kingfisher hovers mid-air and suddenly drops, entering the water surface like a bullet, and comes out with a fish in its long bill!

There is the Bengal Florican courting the female with its best foot forward — a leap into the air and a display of white wings contrasting with its dark body. You get a glimpse of the Bar Swallow’s summer home right amid human habitation to save itself from predators like hawks; the Bay-Backed Shrike Butcher living up to its reputation as it consumes a fat, juicy Calotes lizard bit by bit; the Greater Coucal predating on a range of creatures — from small snakes to nestlings.

There is the Common Hoopoe probing the ground for insects; the Red-Vented Bulbul exploiting every food opportunity; and the Sarus Crane breaking into “the most endearing courtship dance of the subcontinent”.

While being a birdwatcher and wildlife enthusiast did help, at times Chakravarty had to depend on secondary sources, such as his brother, a bat scientist, his colleagues and information on similar species. A tough one was the forest-dweller Brown Fish-Owl. “It leads a secretive life. Not many people have managed to see it in action. So, I had to rely on the footage of a very closely-related owl, called the Blakiston’s Fish Owl, which is found in China. It leads a very similar life. Various scientific publications corroborated my illustration.”

It took Chakravarty four years to bring out this book. “The sequences illustrating sparrows and beetles are simple and straightforward and took a couple of days to complete. But extremely complicated ones, like the one depicting an entire murmuration of Rosy Starlings, took multiple drafts and a month to complete.”

Chakravarty goes by the Instagram handle Greenhumour and that’s what defines much of his art practice too. Ask him if a serious issue like conservation or climate change is dealt with better by way of humour, and he isn’t very sure. He feels shorter attention spans are a challenge more than ever. “There was a time when humour worked. But reading isn’t really a culture anymore like it used to be. At present, I’m navigating this shift in the way people perceive comics and engage with it.”

As Chakravarty tries to find his way, pick this book to cherish a ringside view of the shenanigans of those that dwell around you.

(To follow Rohan Chakravarty’s work, log on to www.greenhumour.com)