Sriram Reddy becomes first person in Telangana to document 400 bird species
Birder Sriram Reddy, a software engineer by profession, the first man to document 400 bird species out of 434 birds that were spotted across the State so far, developed a passion for bird photography in 2015
Sangareddy: In a rare record, a seasoned wildlife photographer from Hyderabad has documented 400 bird species, and in the process, became the first person to see 400 bird species in Telangana.
Birder Sriram Reddy, a software engineer by profession, the first man to document 400 bird species out of 434 birds that were spotted across the State so far, developed a passion for bird photography in 2015 after seeing a flock of colourful flamingos flying over Osman Sagar. In the past four years, Sriram Reddy never missed a weekend visit to various spots in the State to capture birds in his camera.
Sriram Reddy, a native of East Godavari district in Andhra Pradesh, moved to Hyderabad in 2000 after completing his graduation in engineering. Since then, he enjoys spending weekends trekking or taking pictures of landscapes that started with a friend taking him to Osman Sagar to see the flamingos in July 2015. “I didn’t even have the basic knowledge of birds then. I used to search the Internet to identify the communities that were working on birds when I came across Deccan Birders and Hyderabad Birding Pals (HBP),” the techie told Telangana Today.
Following the advice of Phani Krishna Raavi, a founder member of HBP, Sriram Reddy started uploading his pictures on eBird, a worldwide online database of bird observations, in October 2015. After going through the database, Sriram Reddy said he saw the record of legendary birder Ashish Pitte, who photographed 348 bird species out of 360 in Telangana until then. “Since then, I have spent time studying the work of Ashish Pitte and toured extensively across Telangana but never imagined that I would one day photograph even 300 bird species,” he said.
The birder recorded 290 bird species out of 294 sighted at Manjeera Wildlife Sanctuary in Sangareddy district. Not only in Telangana, he has also visited many birding hotspots across the country and documented 928 bird species out of 1,350 sighted on Indian soil so far. While well-known birder Shashank Dalvi owns the record of capturing the highest bird species (1,234) in India, Sriram Reddy aims to cross the 1,000 milestone by the end of 2022 by visiting some prominent places in the country.
Sriram Reddy said most parts of Telangana particularly the northern parts remained unexplored by birders, unlike in neighbouring Karnataka and Kerala. He said he would like to explore Adilabad, Karimnagar, Nizamabad and Warangal districts in the coming days to record new bird species. He photographed Palla’s Gull near Nizamabad recently to complete the 400 bird species reporting in the State. His close friend Phani Krishna Raavi, who documented 392 bird species in Telangana, is just behind him. Sriram Reddy’s photographs were featured in Telangana Bio-diversity journal and several coffee tables books.
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