How A Curious Boy With A Sparrow Became “The Birdman Of India”

Mumbai: A single bird changed everything. As a 10-year-old, Salim Ali found a sparrow with a yellow throat shot with a toy gun. He couldn’t identify it, so his uncle took him to the Bombay Natural History Society. There, staff showed him India’s birds and gave him books. That visit sparked a lifelong obsession.

Born on 12 November 1896 and orphaned early, Ali went on to become India’s most influential ornithologist. Instead of studying birds only in museums, he surveyed them in the wild — forests, wetlands, deserts — for nearly two decades with BNHS, creating some of the country’s earliest scientific bird records.

He wrote 20+ books, including The Book of Indian Birds in 1941 and the 10-volume Handbook of the Birds of India and Pakistan. He also helped protect Keoladeo National Park and Silent Valley.

Ali’s philosophy was simple: study “the living bird in its natural environment.” That idea still shapes Indian conservation today.

From one curious question about a sparrow, a science — and a movement — was born.