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Trevor Price has been studying birds in the Himalayas since 1985 — and they still surprise him. The ornithologist tells TE about his research. ‘We study birds of the Himalayas and, in particular, look at two aspects. First, we ask why the eastern Himalaya has many more species than the Western Himalaya.
After that, birds radiated a lot but 34 million years ago, it suddenly got much colder. Price says, ‘The Amur falcon carries out this astonishing 22,000-km-long migration. They are,’ says Price, his voice warming as he likely thinks of all the birds he has seen 1985 onwards, ‘truly surprising beings.’
Because that wiped out many dinosaurs, pterodactyls, etc, the last famous mass extinction 66 million years ago had a huge impact on them. So many of our actions — from wasting energy mindlessly to demanding neverending rivers of goods, which means more and more deforestation — have tragic impacts on others.
Price says, ‘Birds go back a long way. Importantly, well before we humans came along, ripping up trees and making malls on meadows, birds had learnt to deal with changing climes. Massive ice sheets started to form in Antarctica. Global wind patterns changed, turning northeast India into rainforests. It’s likely that caused birds from Indonesia to enter the Himalayas. These have subsequently evolved into almost half of all bird species, showing climate change effects. TRY AFTER LUNCH! Scientists have found the female among bird species can see colours differently than males, using this power to choose the most vibrant and healthy mate All that entails crystal-clear vision — Price, who has closely studied the evolution of colour vision in birds, elaborates. ‘Birds can see into the shorter ultraviolet (UV) wavelength better than humans as well as seeing further into the red or long wavelength. Humans have three different colour photoreceptors and we can tell reds, greens and oranges apart quite well. But birds, with four types of cone cells, can see a wider spectrum of colours and certainly look further into the UV and the infrared. It’s very difficult to study and understand this but one of the interesting things we’ve discovered is that in quite a few species, female birds have different colour vision than males. These remain largely hidden from our eyes, however, except for research by scientists like Price. Their work goes a long way in both bringing home the facts to us — as well as, in some cases, changing ground reality. It breeds in China and as winter approaches, it leaves and spends about a month in northeast India. Then, it flies all the way to Africa for the rest of the winter and returns to China afterwards. The surprises aren’t over. Price mentions, ‘We once did research on the little yellow patch on the wing of the warbler I mentioned — in that study, we painted the yellow patch to make it bigger. It turned out if you did that, the birds got larger territory. If you painted the patch green, so it looked like the rest of the bird, they got smaller territories. It’s like in the army, where the bigger the stripe you’ve got, the more senior you are. That really astonished me, highlighting the complexities of these birds. They’re just about six grams, the same as a box of matches, and yet, they live in the middle of freezing cold snow, wait for this to melt before they build nests, produce new generations and then fly all the way to southern India for winter, returning again to the freezing cold. The thought of this could exhaust many humans — but they do it, despite being so tiny.
