Fantastic fauna, and a feisty foursome out to find them
Premium
Four students of the Hyderabad Public School, Begumpet, all sharing a love of wildlife, embarked on a delightful journey of documenting exotic insects and birds that their 100-acre campus is home to. Their efforts have culminated in a coffee-table book titled HPS Horizon
Azma Khan, Ibrahimn Wadood, Neo Venkat Gaddipati and Annavarapu Satwik have documented 66 species of birds, 87 kinds of insects, 12 spiders, five snake varieties besides many other crawlies on their sprawling school campus.
| Photo Credit: Special Arrangement
Ashy prinia, a small warbler bird, makes highly vocal calls. The ashy woodswallow makes soft melodious calls, while the Asian koel’s calls are associated with the arrival of the monsoon. The black-winged kite, meanwhile, is reputed to possess exceptional eyesight that helps it catch its prey with unfailing accuracy and ease.
Giving the birds company are the Carabidae or ground beetles, Tenebrionidae or the darkling beetles, Reduviidae or the ground assassin bug, many kinds of ants, wasps, flies, butterflies, centipedes, millipedes, grasshoppers, locusts, crickets and yes, snakes too — cobra, rat snake, wolf snake, sand boas, etc., as well as frogs and toads.
This diverse biodiversity is located right in the centre of the city inside the verdant campus of the Hyderabad Public School, Begumpet, which is spread over more than 100 acres. Four students of the outgoing Class XII ISC batch — Azma Khan, Ibrahim Wadood, Neo Venkat Gaddipati and Annavarapu Satwik — have documented the birds and other animals including the tiny creatures in a coffee-table book titled HPS Horizon.
Azma Khan, Ibrahimn Wadood, Neo Venkat Gaddipati and Annavarapu Satwik have documented 66 species of birds, 87 kinds of insects, 12 spiders, five snake varieties besides many other crawlies on their sprawling school campus.
| Photo Credit:
SPECIAL ARRANGEMENT
The friends have unveiled 66 species of birds, 87 kinds of insects, 12 spiders, five snake varieties and many other countless creatures crawling inside the campus — many invisible to the naked eye. “A good camera can take a photograph which can capture the minutest details. We had to wait for hours to get a good picture,” says Satwik, a budding aerospace engineer with a passion for photography.
It all started when Ms. Azma Khan, was taking the long walk to her classroom after the lockdown when she noticed that “nature had come a lot closer” with squirrels and other animals bounding near them. The sounds of the birds and insects sparked in her an abiding interest in wildlife, which would inspire her to document the biodiversity of the flora and fauna that the school campus was home to.
Ms. Azma, who is pursuing a career in design, says her interest in nature was inspired by her uncle, who is an avid birdwatcher.
She took up the idea with her classmate Ibrahim, a budding zoologist with a ceaseless fascination for turning over rocks to see if there are any crawlies underneath, and a wish to make people aware of the diverse ecosystem surrounding them, especially tiny creatures like ants or lizards. “I was immediately hooked as it was my area of interest. We tend to forget that these tiny creatures play a vital role in our ecosystem,” he says.
The school administration, faculty, non-teaching staff and alumni have supported the project which took the classmates one-and-a-half years to complete. “We started on it in Class XI and worked on it for a good part of Class XII too, including on holidays when we would start early in the morning,” says Mr. Ibrahim, whose aim it is to become a veterinarian. Helping the trio in their project was Mr. Venkat Gaddipati who intends to pursue medicine.
Did the enterprising foursome come across anything startling during their research? “Azma and Ibrahim stumbled upon a snake trying to catch a bird one morning. But I was not there with the camera or it would have been straight out of National Geographic,” guffaws Mr. Satwik.
Read Comments
- Copy link
- Telegram
READ LATER
Remove
SEE ALL
PRINT
Related Topics
Telangana
/
Hyderabad
/
flora and fauna
/
wildlife
/
wildlife
/
nature and wildlife