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Winged Fire: A Celebration of Indian Birds, Part 3 of The Indian Wildlife Trilogy

Winged Fire: A Celebration of Indian Birds, Part 3 of The Indian Wildlife Trilogy

by Valmik Thapar

Regular price Rs 2,106.00
Regular price Rs 2,995.00 Sale price Rs 2,106.00
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Author: Valmik Thapar

Languages: English

Number Of Pages: 510

Binding: Hardcover

Package Dimensions: 9.7 x 7.2 x 1.9 inches

Release Date: 02-03-2016

Details: Product Description The richness of India’s birdlife has been celebrated for centuries. In this book, perhaps the most beautiful book on Indian birds ever published, renowned naturalist Valmik Thapar brings together the finest writing and photographs on our birds. The book also features a specially commissioned essay on the behaviour and distribution of Indian birds by the well-known birder Ramki Sreenivasan. India has more than 1,200 species of birds. The richness and diversity of the country’s birdlife has been celebrated by thousands of ornithologists, birders and amateur naturalists for hundreds of years. Winged Fire brings together the best accounts, pictures and art on our birds. Contributors include luminaries like Babur, Abu’l-Fazl, Jahangir, François Pyrard, Edward Hamilton Aitken, Douglas Dewar, Jim Corbett, Colonel Kesri Singh, F. W. Champion, Salim Ali, E. P. Gee, A. Mervyn Smith, Hugh Allen, Kenneth Anderson, M. Krishnan, Khushwant Singh, R. S. Dharmakumarsinhji, E. R. C. Davidar, Zafar Futehally, Ruskin Bond, A. J. T. Singh, Peter Smetacek, Irwin Allan Sealy, Rishad Naoroji, and Bulbul Sharma. An essay by Ramki Sreenivasan provides a detailed account of the major species and their distribution, behaviour and habitats. Winged Fire is the last book in the trilogy—that also includes Wild Fire and Tiger Fire-put together by Valmik Thapar; taken together, these books give the reader an extraordinary view of India’s wildlife. Features: • The most beautiful book on Indian birds ever published. • Rare pictures selected from tens of thousands of exclusive pictures by the world’s top birdlife photographers. • Most of the world’s top writers on Indian birds represented in the volume. • Some of these pictures have never been seen before. • Written and edited by one of India’s greatest living naturalists, Valmik Thapar. Book Description The paradise flycatcher, Terpsiphone paradisi, is the most beautiful of the summer migrants to the southern slopes of the Himalayas. The female is an inconspicuously coloured bird with a bluish head and pale ashy breast. For two years the male resembles the female in colouration; after the second autumn moult a partial change occurs, but it is not until the third season that the male adopts its characteristic and striking plumage. The whole body becomes white, and the head, surmounted by a large crest, is a glistening, bluish black; dark streaks appear upon the back, but it is the central feathers of the tail that attract the most attention. The median pair are prolonged into beautiful, pure white, flowing ribbons as much as a foot and a quarter in length, while the body of the bird is little more than four inches. Flocks of pink flamingos feeding in the shallows, flying in skeins low over the water or writhing high above the mirages and merging into their unreality like ethereal beings, frail phantoms epitomising life, fragile yet all-conquering. Bird fights were common. Murghabazi, or cockfights, were a popular pastime of the royalty, nobility and commoners alike. Lucknow was the centre of this sport. The myna needs perhaps to make some apology for his yellow stockings, since such mustard-coloured understandings are not usual among small birds, pertaining rather to the rapacious tribe, and being thus a badge of anything but respectability. But the Mmna atones for his yellow legs, feet, and face, by the exceedingly decorous plumage which covers the rest of him; no objection can be made to his black hood, or the sober chocolate of his body colour, or to the plain black, diversified with white, of his quills and tail. Blood pheasant of the Eastern Himalayas. An intermediate egret in full breeding plumage. The lesser florican’s spectacular mating display. The great hornbill about to land. About the Author Valmik Thapar has spent four decades serving the cause of wild India. During this time, he has

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