Birds of Coorg
An ecological archive of the southern Western Ghats.
Circulated privately to family, friends and invited reviewers. If you were not sent a passphrase, the volume below explains the work.
One plate to name the bird. One to understand it.
The A plate carries identification: voice, the species it is confused with, occurrence in Kodagu, and the record itself — who saw it, where, and when. The B plate carries structure, in five independent study cells.
Both shown live from the digital edition, not as screenshots. Illustration is AI-assisted: reference generated, then drawn and painted by hand. The method is stated in full on the atlas's methodology page, folio 123.
One hundred and forty pages, read page by page in the browser.
The Coorg Field Atlas records birds seen in Kodagu, on the eastern flank of the southern Western Ghats. It is a working archive rather than a field guide: it documents what was observed, by whom, and how well — and leaves the rest open.
A record of the build
The atlas holds itself to one rule: a reader should always be able to tell what was observed from what was derived, estimated or simulated. Most of the work went into keeping that rule true across one hundred and forty pages. The stages below are in the order they happened.
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Sizes are published ranges, not measurements taken from the individual observed. The atlas says so on every plate where it applies.
Seventy-nine Kodava Thakk bird names were obtained through Kodava Clan Community. Fifteen matched a plate in this volume and appear on it. The other thirty-four plates record that no name was found, rather than offering a guess.
For Pattu Poovana. My father. A planter, farmer, conservationist, and lifelong lover of animals and the wild.
He taught us that the land was not simply something we inherited. It was something we belonged to — something to understand, work with, care for, and leave alive for those who came after us.
Named in full in the acknowledgements, folio 133, with the observers, naturalists and estate residents the atlas rests on.
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Corrections, doubts and disagreements are wanted, particularly on identification, occurrence and the Kodava names. Cite a folio where you can.
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The atlas was designed as a printed volume: A4 landscape, bound to open flat at every plate pair. Leave your details and you will be told when it prints.