Name, place, animals and trees: A guide to the new field guides of India
The guides track rare species, what’s changing and what’s disappearing even before you’ve learnt to recognise it. Introducing… an old world to new viewers.
When wildlife conservationist Vivek Menon took his copy of The Book of Indian Birds to its author, Salim Ali, for an autograph, Ali was thrilled to see how worn out it was. “He said ‘I’m so glad someone is using my book’,” Menon recalls.
That 1941 book, with its famously detailed hand-painted illustrations by Carl D’Silva, was one of the first field guides on India, by an Indian.
Such books, as the name suggests, are meant to be taken into the field: into a forest, national park, safari, lakeside, garden, local park or even just one’s balcony.
Their mission is to help researchers, naturalists and nature-lovers identify a creature they have seen, without having to capture or kill it (as was historically done).
Field guides on birds have been particularly popular through the years, given the country’s diverse bird populations, and its many bird-lovers. Also popular are guides on India’s diverse flowers, trees, and crowd-pleaser insects such as butterflies.
Now, the net is widening.
Recent works have included field guides on the spiders of Kanha, the fungi of Bengaluru, the dragonflies and damselflies of north-western India, as well as India’s tiger beetles, ants, orchids, even edible molluscs. Illustrations are supplemented by lush images, charts and data.
It can be challenging to pack all this into the standard field-guide frame, says Menon, who is also co-founder of the NGO Wildlife Trust of India and author of Indian Mammals: A Field Guide (2023).
A book of this nature should typically be no more than 6 inches wide and 10 inches long, roughly the size of a standard novel, so it can be ferried about and flipped through easily.
Even when it’s done, it isn’t done. Putting such a compendium together can be a lifelong effort. It can take a decade or more to get a first edition out, which must then be periodically updated if it is to stay relevant.
Dheerendra Singh, a naturalist and trained botanist, will tell you certain species make it harder than it needs to be!
“It requires a lot of patience to shoot dragonflies,” he says grimly. His lushly produced Field Guide to the Dragonflies and Damselflies of Northwest India was released in 2022.
Singh spent 10 years chasing the gossamer creatures across freezing Himalayan plains and the scorching Thar desert. He crawled through fields and to the edges of cascades.“One has to have the ability to stand still in very wet environments,” he says.
This is a particularly interesting time to have a host of new field guides out, because in addition to the diversity of flora and fauna they represent, they are also telling a story of change.
Sudhir Vyas’s The Birds of the Delhi Area represents this shift through current and historic distribution data.
Trees of South India by forester Paul Blanchflower and landscape architect Marie Demont traces a 50-year effort to restore and research a rare tropical dry evergreen forest along the eastern coast.
Singh, for his part, says he worries about his tiny subjects. “I have seen their habitats dwindle. Construction and rising water pollution are hurting their ecosystems.”
What else is tucked away in the newest field guides on the changing wilds of India? Take a look.
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Wildlife of South India: An all-in-one-compendium
Is it a bird? Is it a butterfly? Is it a reptile? Whatever the answer, chances are you’ll find it in the Photographic Field Guide: Wildlife of South India by David Raju, 40, and Surya Ramachandran, 35.
Originally self-published in 2021, the book has been updated and re-released by Notion Press. It is the authors’ second one together.
Their first was a book on the wildlife of central India, which drew directly on their many years as nature guides at the Satpura National Park in Madhya Pradesh. This time, they decided to return to shared roots: Raju is from Kottayam in Kerala, Ramachandran from Chennai in Tamil Nadu.
“We have been watching and learning in the field for so long. We thought, if we can put together the knowledge we have gained, in a beautiful manner, it could be beneficial,” Raju says.
All the data has been reviewed by a panel of experts. But in writing it, the guides have tended away from technical jargon and instead used the same techniques they deploy in the field, when trying to help nature-lovers sight a hard-to-spot animal.
The guide explains, for instance, that the forest wagtail, a winter migrant to South India, is the only one of its kind that wags its tail from side to side, rather than up and down, thus helping the reader answer the possibly urgent question of what kind of wagtail they’re looking at.
In all, the 360-page work features more than 2,000 species, with lush photographs of each sourced from across the country. Getting the pictures together proved to be less trouble than they anticipated, Raju says. “We put out a call on various online forums, and because this was our second book together, people knew we were serious, and contributed generously.”
Both books, incidentally, were inspired by a gift from a friend: Wildlife of South Africa: A Photographic Guide (2010) by Duncan Butchart. “That work is so well-produced that if you carry it to a national park anywhere in South Africa, you will be able to identify most of the animals,” Raju says. Their effort seeks to be a similar one-stop resource.
“The idea is for people to just carry just one book, instead of multiple ones, on their travels,” Raju says.
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Tiger beetles: It’s a carnivorous bug’s life
There are four lakh species of beetles in the world; the largest order in the animal kingdom.
Many are agricultural pests. (It’s strawberry fields forever, for the sap beetle.)
Most are herbivores, but not all. Some have evolved to eat other animals.
That’s how tiger beetles got their name.
These tiny, colourful predators are voracious hunters that feed on caterpillars, grasshoppers, ants, spiders, other beetles — anything they can get their long sickle-shaped mandibles into.
“They are fascinating creatures,” says VP Uniyal, 62, an entomologist with the research body Wildlife Institute of India in Dehradun.
His Field Guide to the Tiger Beetles of India, co-authored with David L Pearson, Jürgen Wiesner, Robert E Acciavatti, and Alexander Anichtchenko, was published in 2020 by Bishen Singh Mahendra Pal Singh.
The 315-page work represents all 241 species of tiger beetles found in India, more than 100 of which are endemic.
Glossy images sourced from around the world aim to help the reader tell them apart.
Uniyal says his fascination with tiger beetles began in the mid-1990s, when he came across a paper by co-author Pearson, now a research professor of biology at Arizona State University. It opened his eyes, he says, to the spectacular array, and to the fact that there were people dedicating their lives to tracking and studying just them.
Despite the collaborative effort, the book has taken 10 years to pull together.
It details how tiger beetles can be seen through the year, if one looks carefully. How they act as crucial pest control in agricultural regions. And how they can be identified by their long, slender bodies, long legs, bulging eyes and tell-tale mandibles.
Even with the book now out, the authors’ work isn’t done. There are more tiger beetles being classified every year. In India alone, 49 new species were identified in the last 30 years.
Uniyal hopes to find some himself. He is planning exploratory expeditions in the Western Himalayan and Trans-Himalayan regions.
“There is still so much we don’t know about the tiger beetles’ distribution, behaviour and seasonality,” he adds. His hope is that the book will get more people involved, perhaps eventually spark something like a bird race, and prompt more young enthusiasts to join the mission.
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Molluscs: Shell’s kitchen
If you’re packing a picnic and heading to a freshwater body in India, you might consider adding Edible Non-Marine Molluscs of India to the basket.
This 2023 field guide by NA Aravind, 49, and Anushree Jadhav, 36, is a comprehensive account of which snails, slugs, clams, etc one may safely eat.
“Marine molluscs are more widely known and consumed. Far less is known about the molluscs found in lakes, rivers and on land,” says Aravind, a senior fellow and convenor at the SM Sehgal Foundation Centre for Biodiversity and Conservation of the Ashoka Trust for Research in Ecology and the Environment (ATREE).
“Yet, when we were working on a project on bio-resources of the north-east, we found that about 20 such species were being consumed there. That’s when we thought of documenting these varieties.”
The guide is an exhaustive effort.
The list of which molluscs are edible (so often a subjective matter) was compiled through primary surveys conducted across the country over 10 years, as well as surveys of academic and literary sources and conversations with researchers.
Some of the edible molluscs are used in traditional and pharmaceutical medicines and these uses are listed too. A second edition, which the authors hope to release in a few years, may even offer recipes, Aravind says.
Meanwhile, one may take a crack at them guilt-free, he adds. “Most of these species are found abundantly in nature, and none of them is endangered.”
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Dragonflies and damselflies: Tiny dreams take flight
“Dragonflies are not easy to photograph,” says Dheerendra Singh, 31, a dire note in his voice.
They propel themselves every which way, “up, down, back, forward and sideways, and hover in mid-air.”
They’re skittish, and fast. “And, of course, they’re tiny.”
One cannot help but imagine Singh in hot pursuit, across green meadows, anything but a happy camper. Well, he’s a happier camper now.
His Field Guide to the Dragonflies and Damselflies of Northwest India (2022; Bishen Singh Mahendra Pal Singh), took 10 years to put together, but is finally done.
Its 528 pages describe 162 species of odonates. “As with birds, the females are often a different and duller colour,” says Singh, a naturalist who trained as a botanist.
Exquisite images of damselflies, the dragonfly’s daintier cousin, illustrate how one can tell them apart by their gossamer wings, wider-set eyes and stick-like bodies.
About 75% of the 500 photographs in the book are by Singh, which helps explain his exasperation. Not only was he chasing these creatures over a decade, he was often doing so in less-than-ideal conditions: freezing Himalayan plains, the scorching Thar desert, marshy fields and the edges of cascades.
“I had to have the perfect shots with the necessary characteristics for identification,” he says. “It requires a lot of patience, and the ability to stand still in very wet environments.”
Tiny grudges aside, he is worried for the little things, he says.
“I have seen their habitats dwindle over the years. In places like Himachal Pradesh and Uttarakhand, construction and rising water pollution are hurting their ecosystems. The diminishing of wetlands could be devastating for them too.”
In the book, Singh leaves his readers with a bit of advice: Watch these spectacular creatures in the wild. Observe how they use their iridescent wings. Learn their names; and speak up for them, whenever you can.
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Trees of South India: A forest-building starter kit
What does it take to grow a forest? You could start with a book.
Trees of South India: Native Trees and Shrubs of the South Indian Plains and Hillocks (2024; HarperCollins) traces a 50-year effort to restore and research a rare forest ecosystem along the Coromandel Coast. It is co-authored by British-born forester Paul Blanchflower, 58, and French landscape architect Marie Demont, 47.
The book lists the trees and shrubs native to India’s only tropical dry evergreen forest (TDEF; a forest ecosystem that remains lush all year, despite scanty rain), as well as species that grow in the dry deciduous forests found in the South Indian plains.
Geographically, the range spreads across coastal parts of Tamil Nadu, Andhra Pradesh, Telangana and Odisha, to parts of eastern Kerala and Karnataka, including sections of the Western and Eastern Ghats.
Blanchflower began to study and help restore a segment of it in the early 1990s when, as a young forestry graduate, he joined a group of restorers working on the edges of Auroville, the experimental township set up in Tamil Nadu and partially in Puducherry in 1968.
The sprawling Auroville property was then a degraded plateau overrun by the invasive Acacia auriculiformis, a native to Australia, and other pioneer species.
“We started by visiting sacred groves around the region, because that’s where we would find the remnants of the native forest,” Blanchflower says.
As they studied the vegetation and framed their restoration programme across 12 sq km of land within Auroville, the group of restorers collected seeds, photographs and rooms full of documentation, which they have since been archiving on auroville-tdef.info.
Over time, the idea of the book was born.
Highlights include 190 trees of ecological importance to the region, including the rare satin wood (Chloroxylon swietenia), poplar-leaved ardor (Hildegardia populifolia), Indian kino (Pterocarpus marsupium), red sanders (Pterocarpus santalinus) and rosewood (Dalbergia latifolia).
“Many of the trees in the book can be found in the Auroville Botanical Gardens,” says Blanchflower. “There are still some species we have not been able to germinate ourselves, but they do grow in the wild. With this book, we’re trying to get people to actually notice and recognise these natives. Eucalyptus and teak are not it!”
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Delhi birds: Flock, stock and barrel
It’s hard to imagine, but Delhi is the second-most bird-rich capital in the world, after Nairobi, Kenya. Bird-spotters have recorded sightings of 471 species – residents such as ruddy-breasted crake and Tickell’s blue flycatcher, winter visitors from Siberia and Central Eurasia, passage birds such as the greater flamingo, and chance sightings of the Terek sandpiper.
Across the city, there’s much for a feathered friend to do. And the richest sightings have been along the Yamuna river, the fertile upper Gangetic plains and the Aravallis, apart from the Okhla Bird Sanctuary, the Hastinapur Wildlife Sanctuary, and the Sultanpur National Park.
So, it’s no surprise that Delhi has a dedicated group of birders. Their records show not only which winged visitors fly in, but how the city itself has changed for bird habitats.
Sudhir Vyas, a career diplomat, has been scanning the sky for about four decades, during postings in Delhi. In 2019, he published the monograph The Birds of the Delhi Area: An Annotated Checklist in the online journal Indian Birds. A 2023 book of the same name, published by Juggernaut, builds on that work. It trawls through citizen science data gleaned out of tracking apps such as eBird, and sightings recorded on social media.
It’s more than a field guide. The book, with photographs by Amit Sharma, attempts to provide broader insights on bird habitat, distribution and what we’ve learnt about them in the past decades. Vyas’s data tells us that Delhi has 197 breeding species (198, if you include the colony of feral Great White Pelicans at the Delhi Zoo). We know that there are about 190 non-breeding visitors (winter migrants from the Himalayas and beyond). We also know that the white-capped redstarts show up in the capital after heavy snow in the Himalayan foothills.
“This should benefit and be of use to Delhi’s birdwatching community and meet the specific needs of policymakers and those engaged in conservation fields as well,” Vyas writes, in his introduction.
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Mushrooms: Fungus among us
“What’s this one called?” “What about this one?”
When they began leading mushroom enthusiasts on foraging walks three years ago, Jashid Hameed, 33, and Prithvi Kini, 31, realised even they didn’t have all the answers.
There were more varieties than they’d realised, just in Bengaluru’s Cubbon Park and Lalbagh Botanical Garden.
They came upon unfamiliar shrooms on tree trunks, in rotting wood, in mossy far corners of the parks. “No two walks were the same,” says Hameed, laughing. “I believe we’ve counted over 200 types of mushrooms so far.”
Some of these now feature in a field guide crafted with the help of Goa-based illustrator Sanjana Singh, 27. She had signed up for a walk in Lalbagh, in 2022. Fascinated by what she saw, she offered to work with Hameed, a permaculturist, and Kini, an agri-entrepreneur, on the art for their proposed field guide.
To ensure accuracy, Singh had help from microbiologist Harikrishnan MT, 27, and mycologist Vhyom Bhatt, 29, both staffers at Hameed and Kini’s wellness enterprise, Nuvedo, which seeks to promote mushroom extracts and growing kits.
Part 1 of Mushrooms of Uru (a play on Bengaluru), a proposed series, was released in June. It offers details on 15 of the most common mushroom types (size, appearance, substrate and habitats). The aim is to help fans of shrooms learn more, across the country.
“These are mushrooms found in most urban environments in India,” Hameed says.
The guide includes some of his favourites. There’s the majestic Ganoderma applanatum, which can grow to the size of a human head. Woodears, “which are gelatinous, certainly edible, and are fun to squish in one’s hands. We’ve seen grown adults become like kids when they encounter them.”
And Gymnopilus purpuratus, a rusty-orange fungi that “grows everywhere in Cubbon Park”, helps wood decay and contains the psychedelic compound psilocybin, “but is definitely not edible,” he says.
— Christalle Fernandes
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