KOLKATA: Students of a city's premier college built 350 nests for birds which will be hung on trees, on the buildings and on the street lamps below the flyovers, under the watchful eyes of Rakesh Khatri, who has so far built 6 lakh nests and is known as Nestman of India.
All these students will train their peers, siblings and parents to grow the number of nests exponentially only to compensate partially for the habitat loss for sparrows, bulbul, myna, and tailorbird, which were abundant in number and are now hardly seen in the urban vicinities.
“The most alarming disappearance was house sparrow from the skyscape of urban India. We have blocked the ventilators and modern-day buildings don't even have them. A healthy population of birds in your locality is an indication of the healthy ecology of your neighbourhood. If you suddenly notice that birds are suddenly missing, it is something ominous about the ecology and environment,” said Khatri.
"I came to Kolkata, on an invitation by JD Birla Institute principal Deepali Singhee for a workshop being organized by JDBI’s National Social Service wing and over 400 students across different departments have registered for it. The nests will be released and hung on May 19 on the occasion of World Endangered Species Day," she said.
Khatri has done research and development work for the nests since his retirement.
“Watching the nesting and observing the behaviour of birds became an obsession for me and my wife. I spent hours looking at trees or corners of a building where birds nested. People called us mad,” reminisced Rakesh, who has an enviable track record of 80% of his nests having been adopted by birds.
“Tree species must be indigenous. Birds will never choose a foreign species or invasive tree species for nesting. The nest must be at a height of 10-12 feet from the ground. It should be built in such a way that eggs cannot be seen from outside,” said Khatri.
The house must give a bird its sense of security first, and comfort later.
“I never miss the opportunity to train students as they are the future generation and birds are the worst hit by climate change,” he added.
One of the key reasons for dwindling avian species in the urban landscape like Kolkata is the rapid growth of pigeons.
“We keep feeding pigeons and only pigeons. Pigeons with greater reproduction rate outnumber all other bird species. With pigeons being an invasive species to the sparrow landscape, the competition for resources increased and pushed the sparrows to degraded and ecologically sub-structured regions of their natural habitat," he added.
