Asad Rahmani’s first Great Indian Bustard sighting came in May 1981, during an early field survey at Sonkhaliya. What began as one encounter became years of research into the bird’s behavior and breeding—and a lasting bond shaped as much by local guides and rural life as by the bustard itself.
How did the Great Indian Bustard change ornithologist Asad Rahmani’s life?
In 1980, a conference in Jaipur focused attention on the Great Indian Bustard and its status in different parts of India. The meeting followed an Arab sheikh’s attempt to hunt Houbara Bustards in the Thar Desert, where Great Indian Bustards also live. The next year, Rahmani began surveying for the Bombay Natural History Society’s Endangered Species Project.
He went first to Nannaj in April 1981, then to Sonkhaliya in May. There, local guide Ranvir Singh Rathore took Rahmani and his team to Goga, whom the memoir describes as a local authority on bustards. On the following morning’s outing, Rahmani saw a juvenile Great Indian Bustard, then four birds, and 15 in all over the next two hours. That total was his observation on one field outing, not an estimate of the species’ population.
Rathore kept a careful distance while the team watched through binoculars. The scene matters in Rahmani’s recollection not only because it was his first sighting, but because it depended on people who knew the place and the birds. He later wrote, “Like the bustard, Goga left a lifelong impression on me.” The excerpt appeared in Scroll on December 10, 2024, from Rahmani’s memoir, Living With Birds: The Memoir of One of India’s Greatest Ornithologists.
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From a first sighting to years of fieldwork
Choosing Nannaj for sustained study
Rahmani visited Karera in July 1981 and recalled seeing three bustards in the sanctuary. Later that year, he returned to Nannaj and chose it for longer-term study because the birds were relatively easy to observe there. His team went on to study the bustards for four years.
That work took the story well beyond the excitement of a first encounter. The team recorded territorial behavior, displays, mating, nesting, and chick survival. In the memoir, the bird’s effect on Rahmani is thus visible both as a personal turning point and as the beginning of sustained field research.
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What the memoir says about conservation and rural life
The recollection is not only about watching a rare bird. When Rahmani returned to Sonkhaliya in 1982, Goga told him that his seven-year-old son, Ganesh, had died after an infection. Rahmani reflects on the painful contrast between efforts to protect a bird and the lack of good medical facilities available to a poor rural family.
That moment complicates any simple account of conservation as work conducted apart from people’s lives. The guides’ knowledge made the bird research possible, while the hardship Rahmani witnessed made clear that conservation unfolded amid urgent human needs too.
What this memoir excerpt can—and cannot—say about the bird today
Rahmani’s account is a personal history of fieldwork in the early 1980s, not a current population assessment. In a November 14, 2024, interview with Hindustan Times, Rahmani described the bird’s former range and its remaining concentration; the article’s “hundred-odd birds” wording reports his statement, not an independently established current count. The memoir excerpt alone should not be used to infer the species’ present population or range.
Independent reader supportYour contribution helps us test, update, and keep practical guides available for everyone.About Living With Birds
Juggernaut published Rahmani’s memoir, which reflects on his life as an ornithologist. In a March 21, 2025, review, Business Standard reviewer Ghazala Shahabuddin characterized it as a view of Indian birds, conservation over roughly half a century, and field ornithology, including the wider context of grassland and savannah conservation.
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