HEAR THE BIRDS SING

The silence of the lockdown helped India’s birders expand the country’s birdsong database

- VARUN RAMESH BALAN

Amidst one of the darkest moments of World War II, as Allied troops were about to evacuate the beaches of Dunkirk, Ludwig Koch, a kindly German sound recordist living in the UK, wrote a letter to The Times urging the public to take a moment to listen to the birds. “War or no war, bird life is going on and even the armed power of the three dictators cannot prevent it. I would like to advise everybody in a position to do so, to relax his nerves, in listening to the songs, now so beautiful, of the British birds,” he wrote.

Tellingly, in times of man-made crises, humans find solace in the sounds of nature. Amid the isolation imposed by Covid-19, birders have found a silver lining. The drone of cities and human machines has been silenced, allowing the sound of bird song to permeate living rooms and balconies once again.

“The birds were always here, but now we are able to hear them,” says Sharad Apte, a retired banker living in Sangli, Maharashtra. Considered among the pioneers of recording bird song in India, his collection of bird recordings spans 422 species and subspecies, with over 52GB of data containing more than 3,000 sound files. “Files are saved with details like species, type of call, date and time, location and comments on behaviour. I developed my own website (birdcalls.info) to share my recordings,” he tells THE WEEK.

Self-taught, he began recording bird song in 1998, acquiring better equipment and protocols over the years, so as to create a lasting archive of sounds. Over time, he came to know a calendar of bird activity: Knowing which birds would sing; where, and when.