Shmes Ansari: Reading the Health of a City Through Its Birds

Naturalist Specialty: Birds · Urban Ecology

Shmes Ansari once held a flamingo in his own hands. Spotting a baby flamingo struggling in the Karave wetland, he called a rescuer friend, and together they lifted it from the water. He observed everything he could — the beak, the feathers, the legs, the eyes — before sending the dehydrated bird to Karnala Bird Sanctuary for rehabilitation. It’s the kind of close encounter that defines how he sees his specialty.

## Shmes Ansari: Reading the City Through Its Birds

For Shmes, birds are far more than beautiful. A bird’s presence or absence can reveal pollution, habitat disturbance, seasonal shifts, fish movement, insect emergence, even weather changes — long before humans notice. Birds, he says, are basically a free environmental monitoring system, and thankfully they’re almost everywhere. With 3,000+ hours in the field, he has researched frog mating behaviour and sunbird nesting in the Western Ghats and monitored waterbirds at Point Calimere with BNHS.


His training is impressively varied: an M.Sc. in Biodiversity, Wildlife Conservation and Management, a naturalist training program with the iNaturewatch Foundation, and a wildlife-filmmaking course. His field kit always includes binoculars, a power bank, and his itr (perfume) — so that when he re-enters human habitation, no one can smell where he’s been exploring (though the muddy pants might give him away). His approach to teaching is about curiosity over checklists.

> “Good naturalists don’t just identify species — they learn how to ask better questions about the world around them.”