Naturalist
Specialty: Birds · Urban Ecology
Shmes Ansari once held a flamingo in his own hands. Spotting a baby flamingo struggling in the Karave wetland, he called a rescuer friend, and together they lifted it from the water. He observed everything he could — the beak, the feathers, the legs, the eyes — before sending the dehydrated bird to Karnala Bird Sanctuary for rehabilitation. It’s the kind of close encounter that defines how he sees his specialty.
Shmes Ansari: Reading the City Through Its Birds
For Shmes, birds are far more than beautiful. A bird’s presence or absence can reveal pollution, habitat disturbance, seasonal shifts, fish movement, insect emergence, even weather changes — long before humans notice. Birds, he says, are basically a free environmental monitoring system, and thankfully they’re almost everywhere. With 3,000+ hours in the field, he has researched frog mating behaviour and sunbird nesting in the Western Ghats and monitored waterbirds at Point Calimere with BNHS.
His training is impressively varied: an M.Sc. in Biodiversity, Wildlife Conservation and Management, a naturalist training program with the iNaturewatch Foundation, and a wildlife-filmmaking course. His field kit always includes binoculars, a power bank, and his itr (perfume) — so that when he re-enters human habitation, no one can smell where he’s been exploring (though the muddy pants might give him away). His approach to teaching is about curiosity over checklists.
“Good naturalists don’t just identify species — they learn how to ask better questions about the world around them.”
