Mumbai loses its ‘bird man'

Hindustan Times

29-05-2025

MUMBAI:
'Birds teach, they are always revealing some secret, they act as a barometer of the city's general health,' Sunjoy Monga had once told HT. He was to go birding in Lokhandwala this weekend,' said Ravi Vaidyanathan, his friend and partner in his lifelong obsession. It's a date he couldn't keep, for on Wednesday evening, Monga, 63, succumbed to a nine-year battle with blood cancer.
An award-winning wildlife photographer and author of several books on nature and birds, Monga was a beloved son of Mumbai. His advocacy for the natural world saw him write a regular column for HT titled 'Mumbai Safari'. He will also be remembered for his 'Bird Race', an annual bird-spotting event that inspired a love of birds in hundreds of Mumbaiites over the years. He's also left a treasure trove of writing for birders.
'A great tree has fallen,' said Pravin Subramanian, who organised the Bird Race with Monga since 2007. 'Monga started his bird-watching journey with legends like Humayun Abdulali and Salim Ali. Back then, there were only two books for bird enthusiasts to follow. Monga filled this void by writing comprehensible books for all.'
Deepak Apte, former head of BNHS, said, 'I met Monga in the early '90s, when he led nature trails for the BNHS. He introduced us to the world of scientific bird watching, teaching us to identify birds and listen to bird sounds.'
Bittu Sahgal, founder-editor of conservation magazine 'Sanctuary Asia', remembered Monga fondly as a 'crack birder-naturalist'. Speaking about Monga's time between 1990 and 1994 as associate editor at the magazine, Sahgal said, 'Sunjoy was viscerally a part and parcel of 'Sanctuary Asia' magazine at its very start, and a key reason we were able to navigate our way through the science and interpretation of the counterintuitive world of wildlife conservation and natural history. Together, we almost convinced Sir David Attenborough to shoot a few sequences of 'Life on Earth' in India in the early 1980s!'
Monga organised Mumbai's first bird race in 2005. It's an exercise he organised annually - now known as 'Wings - Birds of India' - and took to 33 other Indian cities. Inspired by the Hong Kong bird race, Monga called upon all birdwatchers to set aside 12 hours, keeping their eyes peeled for avians of all species. During the first race, 100-odd enthusiasts sighted 277 species of birds in and around Mumbai – and the legacy continues to this day.
'I joined as a participant in the third bird race and have been one of the organisers for the last seven,' said Vaidyanathan. 'Back then, we would jot all our findings in log books and Sunjoy would compile the data. It was Sunjoy who highlighted the death of the wetlands in Uran, where around 12 years ago we were able to spot 60-70 bird species in an hour. Today, even Lokhandwala Lake, in his backyard, is rapidly losing its winged visitors.'
Raju Kasambe, programme manager, lands, at The Nature Conservancy, an environmental organisation, remembered, 'At the end of each race, Sunjoy would put together an amusing presentation with a lot of takeaways. It took a lot of grit in the early years to put together a checklist of birds and hand it over to 30 groups, then analyse each sheet and the data, but he did it every year. A lot it has migrated to the e-bird app.'
In 2007, Monga launched another project close to his heart. Called 'Young Rangers', it was a training programme that introduced school children to the wild and sensitised them to the environment. It wound up a few years later but is fondly remembered.
Monga was a member of the governing council of the Bombay Natural History Society (BNHS) for several years. Like many naturalists, Monga's expertise was much sought-after. He was a part of the Executive Committee of the MMRDA's Environment Improvement Society, Maharashtra Nature Park Society and honorary Warden of the Sanjay Gandhi National Park.
'Birds were his driving force,' recalled Yuhina Monga, his daughter. 'His terminal illness did not deter him from going bird watching. He would frequently go with his camera by the Lokhandwala Lake and capture birds. In particular, he had a special connection with owls and would collect figurines of different species from all over the world and keep them on display.'