Rare birds and the "Birdman of India"

Known as the "Birdman of India", Dr.Salim Moizuddin Abdul Ali's(or Dr.Salim Ali, as he is better known) name was synonymous with birds to everyone.



On his return to India in 1930, Ali discovered that the guide lecturer position had been eliminated due to lack of funds. Unable to find a suitable job, Salim Ali and Tehmina moved to Kihim, a coastal village near Mumbai, where he began making his first observations of the Baya Weaver. The publication of his findings on the bird in 1930 brought him recognition in the field of ornithology.

Ali undertook systematic bird surveys of the princely states, Hyderabad, Cochin, Travancore, Gwalior, Indore and Bhopal, under the sponsorship of the rulers of those states. He was aided in his surveys by advice from Hugh Whistler. Salim wrote "My chief interest in bird study has always been its ecology, its life history under natural conditions and not in a laboratory under a microscope. By travelling to these remote, uninhabited places, I could study the birds as they lived and behaved in their habitats."
Hugh Whistler also introduced Salim to Richard Meinertzhagen and the two made an expedition into Afghanistan. Although Meinertzhagen had very critical views of him, they continued to remain good friends. Salim Ali found nothing amiss in Meinertzhagen's bird works but later studies have shown many of his studies to be fraudulent. Meinertzhagen later made his diary entries available to Salim and reproduced in his autobiographical Fall of a Sparrow.

Ali rediscovered a rare weaver-bird species, Finn's Baya in the Kumaon Terai region, but was unsuccessful in his expedition to find the Mountain Quail (Ophrysia superciliosa).
He was accompanied and supported on his early ornithological surveys by his wife, Tehmina, and he was shattered when she died in 1939 following a minor surgery. After Tehmina's death, Salim Ali was looked after by his sister and brother-in-law.


Ali lacked interest in bird systematics and taxonomy.[1] Ernst Mayr wrote to Ripley about Ali's practice of failing to collect sufficient bird specimens suggesting that "as far as collecting is concerned I don't think he ever understood the necessity for collecting series. Maybe you can convince him of that."[1]

Ali himself wrote to Ripley complaining about bird taxonomy:
My head reels at all these nomenclatural metaphysics! I feel strongly like retiring from ornithology, if this is the stuff, and spending the rest of my days in the peace of the wilderness with birds, and away from the dust and frenzy of taxonomical warfare. I somehow feel complete detachment from all this, and am thoroughly unmoved by what name one ornithologist chooses to dub a bird that is familiar to me, and care even less in regard to one that is unfamiliar ----- The more I see of these subspecific tangles and inanities, the more I can understand the people who silently raise their eyebrows and put a finger to their temples when they contemplate the modem ornithologist in action.
—Ali to Ripley, 5 January 1956[2]


=================================================
2nd half of content is from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia