CHENNAI: The study of nature and animals has come a long way in the past century. All you need is the utterly reliable Birds of the Indian Subcontinent when you have a bird hovering 50 feet from the ground and you are trying to tell if it’s the short-toed snake eagle or the crested serpent eagle. A Google search will help determine every kind of mangrove left behind in the Adyar estuary.
Naturally, it wasn’t always this simple. This ease was the work of naturalists and environmentalists who spent years on the ground, slowly and painstakingly gathering information on the natural resources of the place we call home; without all the modern equipment and technological advances we have today. On Sunday, at an event organised by the Madras Naturalists’ Society (MNS), its president K V Sudhakar reminisced about the efforts of the earliest game-changers in the field of nature studies in Chennai, in his talk Naturalists of Madras, the early days.
Let’s rewind 300 years to the times of the East India Company when the flora and fauna of the Madras Presidency caught the attention of many who visited the area as doctors, soldiers, administrators and spouses. Of these people, there were many who became prominent figures in environmental history, bringing to light the then-unknown biodiversity that Madras had to offer. On Madras Day, Sudhakar observed the accomplishments of five prolific naturalists that put Madras on the natural history world map.
The next time you spot an Indian pitta or a paradise flycatcher, you have Edward Bulkley to thank. A surgeon of the East India Company in the early 1700s, he is credited for one of the earliest modern accounts of Indian birds that contained descriptions and drawings of 22 birds found in and about Fort St George. A pioneer in the field, his tomb now rests at the junction of Poonamallee High Road and Evening Bazar Road. “What struck me is that here is a man who came from Britain, settled in Fort St George and was buried in his own garden. He was so attached to the place where he landed that he said it’s the garden that refined his soul so he wished his body to be buried there in hope of resurrection. I found that quite moving,” adds Sudhakar.
Bulkley was one of two naturalists mentioned in the talk who passed away in Madras; the second being Lady Elizabeth Gwillim. The wife of a judge at the Madras High Court, she was a talented artist who replicated birds on paper. Her paintings depicted life-sized dimensions and often observed live subjects posed by handlers. “Her sister writes that sometimes the birds were so stressed that she (Elizabeth) took pity and set them free,” says Sudhakar. Her series of accurately watercolour-painted Indian birds was produced 20 years before John James Audubon’s famous The Birds of America.
Jerdon’s courser, Jerdon’s baza, Jerdon’s leafbird and many birds owe their name to British zoologist and pioneering ornithologist Thomas C Jerdon. He initially collected birds sent for identification abroad. However, after a collection became moth-ridden on its way to Scotland, he began his own identifications and eventually published A Catalogue of the Birds of the Indian Peninsula for the Madras Journal of Literature and Science (1839-40). His most famous work was, however, The Birds of India. “Anyone who is into birdwatching or natural history knows his name,” comments Sudhakar.
Sudhakar then moves on to the only naturalist of the list born in Madras, Dr Hugh Cleghorn. The father of scientific forestry in India, Hugh was the first conservator of forests for the presidency. He made notable contributions to the area by advising for the abolishment of kumari cultivation (or shifting cultivation), creating a systematic forest conservancy, and playing a significant role in the passing of the Indian Forest Act (1865). “He was the first to recognise the importance of forests to the rainfall and climate of a place,” Sudhakar adds.
Finally, we come to Douglas Dewar, an ornithologist and author of several books about Indian birds. Interestingly, and rather humorously, he had accused museum ornithologists of arbitrarily altering names of species. “The sparrows that hold chorus along the ledges of the iron rafters of the Connemara Hotel are far more insulting and exasperating than any other sparrows I have set eyes upon...I propose to call them Passer domesticus indicus maderaspatensis connemara hotelwalla…,” Sudhakar recites Dewar’s writing with a smile on his face. He could not have ended on a better note.