The Birdman of India, Salim Ali (1896–1987)

(1896 – 1987)

Until

the early 20th century, it was British colonialists like Sir Joseph Hooker, Hugh Whistler and Mark Alexander Wynter-blyth who were at the forefront of documenting India’s flora and flauna. But it was Salim Moizuddin Abdul Ali who became India’s most prominent naturalist and ornithologist, meticulously studying, documenting and devoting his lifetime to the study of birds in India.

Born into a wealthy Muslim family in Mumbai as the tenth and youngest child, Salim’s love for nature began as a 10-year-old, when he stepped foot into the Bombay Natural History Society to look for a yellow-throated sparrow he had shot on his uncle’s air- gun. This incident would later inspire his autobiography, The Fall of the Sparrow (1985), published two years before his death at the age of 91.

Having studied zoology at the St. Xavier’s College in Mumbai and dropping out mid-way to look after his family business in Myanmar, Salim Ali later returned to Mumbai and worked as a guide lecturer at the Prince of Wales Museum. In 1928, he went on study leave in Berlin to train under Erwin Stresemann, a renowned German naturalist.

During his lifetime, Salim Ali studied the breeding biology of baya birds, flowerpeckers, sunbirds and flamingoes, conducting surveys and field trips all across the subcontinent from Cochin to Hyderabad to Arunachal Pradesh. His first book, The Book of Indian Birds, was published in 1941, but his magnum opus was the tenvolume Handbook of the Birds of India and Pakistan written together with American naturalist S. Dillon Ripley.

In 1967, Salim Ali became the first Asian to be awarded the Union Medal of the British Ornithologist’s Union, among many other accolades both in India and internationally. Today, the Salim Ali Centre for Ornithology and Natural History stands in Coimbatore in his memory. ag

“Your message has gone high and low across the land and we are sure that weaver birds weave your initials in their nests, and swifts perform parabolas in

the sky in your honour.”

– J. PAUL GETTY WILDLIFE CONSERVATION PRIZE, 1976