“A cock sparrow perched on the nail near the entrance to the hole while the female sat inside on the eggs. I ambushed them from behind a stabled carriage and shot the male. In a very short while the female acquired another male who also sat “on guard” on the nail outside. I shot this male also, and again in no time the female seemed to have another male in waiting who immediately stepped into the gap of the deceased husband”. This is a note written by India’s legendary birdman Salim Ali in 1906-07 when he was a 10-year-old boy.
Many years later Salim Ali wrote in his autobiography The Fall of a Sparrow, “I am rather proud of this note because though intended as a record of my prowess as a hunter and made long before I was conscious of any possible relevance, it has proved more meaningful in the light of present-day behavioral studies”.
Unexpected beginningsMore or less one year after this “experiment” Salim Ali got his first opportunity to visit the Bombay Natural History Society with another bird that he shot down. It was a sparrow again, yet a different species; a yellow-throated sparrow (chestnut-shouldered petronia). The fallen sparrow led him into a world so...
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