Babu's camera captures 'winged wonders' of Prez estate

An observation by President Pranab Mukherjee that the bird habitat in Rashtrapati Bhavan should be studied provided the spark for bureaucrat Thomas Mathew, who took out his camera to chronicle 111 avian species on the sprawling Estate within a span of one year.
Mathew, a 58-year-old IAS officer from Kerala, geared up for this additional task besides performing his duties as Additional Secretary of the President thanks to his childhood hobby of spotting birds, which finally resulted in the book, 'The Winged Wonders of Rashtrapati Bhawan'.
"My interest in birds developed from the time I was in school, when I used to visit my mother's village which had many different species of birds living and thriving in an environment that had not yet faced the onslaught of human greed for more land at the expense of nature.

"In fact, every time I came back from my mother's village, I brought with myself a Parrot and a Common Myna as pets. They learned to imitate human voices and I was proud to show them off to my friends, even taking them to school on social occasions," recalls the author.
Mathew was inspired by the President's love for nature and the pat on his back for the labour came from none other than Prime Minister Narendra Modi himself who, while releasing the book on July 25, said the book was not a mere compilation done by the author but a creation born out of Mathew's personal experiences.

The President wrote in his preface to the book that the work is a labour of love and has delightful, never-seen-before images of the birds that visit or reside in the Rashtrapati Bhavan Estate.

Sitting somewhat relaxed after the book was released in Rashtrapati Bhavan at a function to mark the completion of two years of Mukherjee in office, Mathew recalled his journey in completing the task that was assigned to him by the President.
"I had to complete the task without letting it affect my official work. I knew that no proper survey had been done. The only solution was to identify and motivate some from the army of gardeners, numbering nearly 300, to help locate the birds for me to photograph," Mathew said.

And thus began the first challenge of educating some of the gardeners, who knew of the existence of the birds and their comings and goings in the Estate.
"But that was it, they only knew about their arrival and nothing more. A few (gardeners) were hand-picked and formed into small groups which were motivated to understand more about bird behaviour," he said, adding that some books were also distributed among them.