Greater Adjutants and their Neckties
An odd-looking stork is one of the most characteristic features of the Guwahati Municipal garbage dump, that is IF you’re a municipal worker or a birdwatcher. Adjutants once featured in the Calcutta Municial Corporation’s logo, but were wiped out since from large parts of eastern India because of improvements in sanitation that made conditions for their scavenging lifestyle unfavourable. Today, they are threatened by habitat loss, and contamination of water bodies from industrial and municipal waste. Wildlife conservationist Poornima Devi Burman’s Hargila Army is one of the initiatives dedicated to conserving this species.
The cartoon is from my column with Roundglass Sustain. The Greater Adjutant has earlier featured in more of my cartoons and art, some of which I am sharing here:
An illusrated sequence of a typical day in the life of the Greater Adjutant Storks of the Guwahati garbage dump, from my book Bird Business.
The life and times of Fauji Garud, a Greater Adjutant stork mascot for the Bihar Forest Department, created in 2018-19 to raise awareness of the bird in the villages it lives around.