In 1980, Harsh Vardhan, the president of the Tourism and Wildlife Society of India (based in Jaipur), organised an international conference on the Great Indian Bustard (GIB) in the aftermath of an Arab sheikh’s attempt to hunt the Houbara Bustard in the Thar Desert, where the GIB also lives. The conference publicised the then status of the GIB in various parts of India, including the discovery of a few in Solapur, Maharashtra, where in 1979 after about 100 ha of barren, overgrazed land (3 km from Nannaj village) was taken over by the Forest Department and grazing stopped, a large bird was seen, which no one could identify. BS Kulkarni, the principal of a local school in Solapur, who had an interest in birds, was contacted. He identified it as the “Maldhok”, which is the local name for the GIB. Soon after, the Forest Department conducted a survey to identify the Maldhok areas in Maharashtra; the results of this were presented during the 1980 conference in Jaipur.

In 1981 began a series of surveys, as part of the Endangered Species Project of BNHS. In April of that year, I went to Solapur by train and from there I was taken to Nannaj, about 20 km away, where a few GIB were usually seen during the monsoon in the grassland plots developed under the government’s Drought-Prone Areas Programme (DPAP). The Range Forest Officer (RFO) took me around in his jeep. We did not see any bustards but a few Blackbuck, one of my favourite animals, were around.

The next destination, in the month of May 1981, was Sonkhaliya, around 10 km from Nazirabad in Ajmer district. With requisite permission from the Forest Department in hand, our small team (which included my assistant Jugal Kishore Gajja and our driver Mohanan) met the Ajmer RFO who advised us to meet a certain Ranvir Singh Rathore in Bandanvara (in Ajmer district). He turned out to be the most knowledgeable person as far as bustards of that area were concerned. This is what I wrote in my field notebook that day:

4.30 pm: Went to Sonkhaliya with Mr Rathore. After a few miles of metallic road, a kachcha road started, so Mr Rathore drove the jeep, because he knew the terrain. From Sonkhaliya [we] picked up Goga, a driver and a “local authority” on bustards. Mr Rathore and Goga were very sure of seeing bustards. Roamed for two hours around the best habitat of the GIB but in vain. The next morning, we started early, at 5.55 am, along with Mr Rathore, and saw the first bustard of my life, a juvenile that took off and settled 1.50 km away. Soon we saw four bustards – one male and three females. In the next two hours, we saw a total of 15 bustards.

It was my first sighting of the GIB! Mr Rathore was careful not to disturb the birds, so we maintained a good distance, enjoying the grand sight with binoculars. We dropped Goga off at his village, where his 7-year-old son, Ganesh, came running to greet his father. Thanks to the publicity around the GIB, Goga was a celebrity in the area, as he was much in demand by the Forest Department to accompany dignitaries who wished to see the bustards. I must say, Mr Rathore had trained Goga very well. Tall, dark and handsome, with a red-maroon paggar (traditional headgear), long white kurta and white dhoti, mojari (traditional footwear) and a curling moustache, Goga made an impressive figure. Like the bustard, Goga left a lifelong impression on me.

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It was early July 1981 when I reached Karera, a sleepy little tehsil town, around 45 km from Jhansi, on the Shivpuri-Jhansi road. The discovery of bustards in the vicinity had given it some publicity; its other important landmark was an old derelict fort perched on a hill. It was said to have been built by the Paramaras, who ruled the area under the aegis of the Mughal Empire. The fort had passed through several hands, including the ruling family of Jhansi; despite its colourful history, the fort was neglected and in ruins. If I remember correctly, I managed to see three bustards in the Karera Bustard Sanctuary, which was established to protect them.

After Karera, I returned to Bombay. But soon, in the company of two of my assistants, Ranjit Manakadan and Jugal Kishor Gajja, I went to Jaisalmer (at the end of July 1981). Unfortunately, we returned without seeing a single bustard, due to the non-availability of a suitable vehicle to go to the remote areas. So, in August, along with the assistants, I returned to Nannaj for fieldwork. A total of eight bustards, including two displaying males, were seen in the Nannaj grasslands. I decided to study bustards at Nannaj because they were relatively easily visible. First, we searched for accommodation in Nannaj. But being a small village, rooms were not available for rent; for three months, the three of us stayed in a cheap hotel in Solapur and would commute to Nannaj by bus every day, sometimes making two trips a day. As staying in a hotel, even a cheap one, was proving expensive and difficult in the long run, we finally managed to hire a house. For five months, we spent long hours watching the bustards, and this gave us good preliminary data.

The study continued for four years, with Ranjit being posted there, and Jugal leaving the project a year on. We would spend almost the whole day in the field. Initially, the bustards would hide from us and were quite difficult to sight, but after a few weeks, the birds started tolerating us. A male bustard has a large territory that he defends from the other adult males. We witnessed two adult male territories, one inside the protected grasslands and one outside. The one inside was relatively undisturbed, so the adult male, whom we named Alpha, would display for many hours in the mornings and evenings. Females and young males were tolerated in the territory. During the first year of our study, we could only see the display from afar, but in subsequent years we managed to observe them properly at closer quarters, which helped us describe their elaborate displays in our reports and papers. We also saw the mating of bustards, a seldom observed behaviour that, until then, had not been described properly in published literature. It was the golden period of my bustard study. Some of the finest nesting, chick survival and behaviour data were taken at Nannaj, which we eventually published in a series of research papers and popular articles.

The next year (1982) I visited Sonkhaliya again, with the intention of establishing a second field station, but we were denied permission by the then CWLW Mr Kailash Sankhala on the plea that “you will disturb the birds”. I met Rathore and Goga, and enquired about Ganesh. Goga replied matter-of-factly that Ganesh had died a few months previously, after getting an infection. Life was too short for the little boy. Here was Goga trying hard to save the bustard, but the poor man could not save his own son due to a lack of good medical facilities. At that moment, I realised the reality of poor Indians. Not much has changed in 40 years.

Excerpted with permission from Living With Birds: The Memoir of One of India’s Greatest Ornithologists, Asad Rahmani, Juggernaut.