Urban Birds of Juhu: A Photographic Field Guide by Saloni Tirodkar

Quick game. Name as many birds as you can in ten seconds. Go. Crow, pigeon, sparrow, maybe a parrot if you’re feeling fancy? Yeah, that’s about where most of us run out.

Honestly speaking, I’m not even a bird person. I couldn’t tell you a kite from a koel if you paid me. So when I picked up a field guide to Juhu’s birds, I figured it’d be crows, pigeons and a few sparrows, and that would be that. But nope, it has 123 species in it. A hundred and twenty-three! In Juhu itself, the same place we all complain about the traffic.

The book is Urban Birds of Juhu by Saloni Tirodkar, which you can grab a copy of right here via White Falcon Publishing. She’s a wildlife photographer and a proper birder, and it covers the area’s gardens, lake and beach. She’s made it easy for anyone to pick up, with photos of every bird and plain, simple language, which is perfect for someone who can barely name a bird. You can check out more of her wildlife captures and visual storytelling over on her Instagram. Still, the names in there really got my attention. And stick around till the end, because there’s a little quiz waiting to tell you which Juhu bird you are.

Wait, who is naming these birds?

That was the thought I kept having as I read through the book. There’s a Booby and a Masked Booby, and I’m not going to say a word, because they speak for themselves. There’s a Watercock (moving on) and a Northern Shoveler, which sounds like a snow-clearing service. Then there’s the Besra and the Shikra, which sound like the names of fantasy-novel sorcerers, or maybe a pair of dramatic twins. They’re actually two small hawks, with names that sound far more mysterious than the birds look from a distance. Nature really does hand out names with zero regard for first impressions. 

The Masked Booby isn’t just a funny name, though. The name was so funny that I actually looked it up, and it turns out to be a seabird, so finding it in a book about Juhu’s birds caught me completely off guard. It also turned out to be one of many. A ton of the species in the book aren’t residents at all. They’re migrants that have come from other places, and Juhu is a stop on their way. That’s why I liked that the book notes whether each bird is resident or migratory, along with how often it was spotted and its conservation status. 

What I like most is that someone like Saloni is out there writing all of this down. Beyond her field guide, she has documented local avian life extensively, such as tracking the waterbirds around the Juhu Pawan Hans Airport lake and looking at how communities protect these spaces from invasive threats, which she has explored in her piece Juhu’s Winged Neighbours for the Sanctuary Nature Foundation.  If the numbers ever change, there’s something to look back on and ask what might have caused it. And because the book is full of photographs, none of it feels like homework. It made it easy to get to know the birds, so it only seemed fair to find out which one you’d be. 

Okay, but which Juhu bird are you?

After spending this much time with the birds of Juhu, I couldn’t help noticing how much they resemble the people around us. Every group of friends has a night owl, a dependable one and a chatty one, and Juhu’s birds turn out to be no different. So, here’s a quick guide to finding your feathered twin.

Are you the one who never really sleeps? Your best ideas show up after midnight, “early night” has never applied to you, and you’re wide awake while everyone else is long gone. Then you’re a Barn Owl, a pale, heart-faced bird that sleeps through the day and starts its shift when the rest of the city is winding down.

Knows everyone’s business, has thoughts on all of it, and treats the group chat like a stage. Does that sound like you? Then meet the Common Myna, a brown, sharp-eyed bird with a yellow patch around its eye, usually found in a noisy gang with a lot to say.

If you walk into a room and it feels like it was waiting for you, you’ve probably got main character energy, and you’re not about to apologise for it. You belong with the Painted Stork, a tall, pink-tinged wading bird that strolls through shallow water as if it owns the place.

You’re the one everyone follows without really knowing why. You show up on time, you keep the group together, and plans only seem to work when you’re running them. That makes you a Blue Rock Pigeon, the grey, ever-present city bird that always moves as a flock and somehow always knows where it’s going.

Quiet in a crowd, happiest in your own space, and then suddenly brilliant at something nobody saw coming? Congratulations, you might be a Common Kingfisher, a tiny, brilliantly blue bird that perches almost perfectly still, often on its own, before diving in.

So, who did you get? Send this to the friend who’s clearly the Myna, then give yourself a small challenge: next time you’re out in Juhu, try to spot one bird you can actually name. It doesn’t have to be fancy, a pigeon totally counts, and you’ll be surprised how quickly “just a bird” turns into “oh, that’s a Golden Oriole!” After that, it kind of gets addictive. You start spotting the same birds around, and it feels weirdly nice to know who’s up there. It also makes for a surprisingly good icebreaker, since who knew nature had so many oddly named things? Next time a conversation dries up at a party, “did you know there’s a bird called a Masked Booby living in Juhu?” will get you further than the weather ever did. 

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