Why this woman left a career in architecture to catalogue bird feathers

Esha Munshi has been an architect for 15 years – but her true passion is birds.

“I breathe birds, I paint birds, I read about birds, I see birds, I record the sounds of birds. So 24/7, birds are on my mind,” said the woman from Ahmedabad, India. As it happens hosted by Nil Koksal.

During the pandemic lockdown, Munshi took a two-year online course in bird biology from Cornell University. And now, instead of designing buildings, he uses his aesthetic skills by collecting, photographing, measuring and cataloging the wings and feathers of more than 1,300 species of Indian birds.

“I wanted to give something back to science – something related to birds. So I left my career in architecture behind and I got into this full time,” she said.

Munshi teamed up with avian veterinarian Sherwin Everett to create the Feather Library, an online database of Indian bird feathers. This is the first collection in India, and only a few in the world.

The idea came during the lock-up when most were inside, and the birds were out in full force, he said.

One day he saw an Indian silverbill outside his house, a species of passerine bird that was only about 11 centimeters long.

While Munshi loves birds, he also has cats, so he has a bird net to protect them from animal predators. But the small silverbill is able to slip completely.

“My cat attacked quickly, and I happened to save it [the bird] just in time and release again. But, out of fear, birds tend to lose some of their feathers, and that’s what this little bird did,” he said.

He picked up some feathers in his hand and was attracted to her. The longest one is smaller than the little finger. This made him think of the Indian peacock, whose colorful tail feathers can grow up to 1.5 meters.

“It just made me curious to know more about fur,” she said. “The two are contradictory feathers, which I see, and I want to understand the whole spectrum between them. [wondered] where should i find it? And I can’t find the answer. So I thought: Why don’t I make one?”

FeatherLibrary.com is available to bird watchers and scientists, he said.

“Wherever people go, whether it’s a child or an older person, if there’s a feather on the ground, they’ll pick it up. And you know, there’s something about feathers that fascinates everyone,” said Munshi. “So I think the first idea is to create curiosity. The second idea is to create a dataset for future scientists to look at and analyze.”

The feathers usually come through Everett, who works at a bird hospital in Ahmedabad.

Aaccording to the Feather Library websitehis clinic treats between 1,500 and 2,000 birds a year – some common, and some quite rare.

But not every bird makes it, and when they succumb to injury and die, the body is just thrown away.

Now, instead of letting all the potential data go to waste, the poultry clinic allows Everett and Munshi to photograph and digitize the feathers and wings before they are thrown away.

So far, it has cataloged 100 species, out of approximately 1,331 in the country.

“There is still a long way to go,” Munshi said.

Scott V. Edwards, a Harvard ornithologist who was not involved in the project, called it “super fun.”

“I will really draw attention to the beauty of bird feathers when you can see them in detail. And, you know, it is also useful for some practical purposes. People often try to identify species by individual feathers, so this will be a great help for this,” he said.

“It’s really exciting and new. I’ve never seen anything like it.”

Edwards said it could be useful for scientists who need to identify bird species as part of their research.

What’s more, he said you can learn a lot about birds based on their wings and feathers – how they attract mates, how they fly, what kind of habitat they occupy, and moulting patterns throughout the year, for example.

Not to mention, they are beautiful to look at.

“I’m always amazing how natural selection has just sculpted these exquisite details. But it’s not all about survival, though. I think it’s like a bird’s wings really so we see the exuberance of life and biology,” he said.

“Birds are in decline all over the world, so hopefully a resource like this will inspire people to remember where they came from and contribute to longevity in maintaining the planet’s biodiversity.”