It is now four years since I've seen the Ashy Swallow Shrike of which half a dozen would scream along the trail leading from Aarey to the south-gate of the National Park.

During the winter just gone by, I saw just a solitary Hair-crested Drongo, and a couple of Bronzed Drongos.

Barely a couple of Yellow-eyed Babblers sang through the last monsoon while of the Three-toed Forest Kingfisher, there were exactly two fleeting glimpses. For three consecutive winters now the Forest Wagtail has not showed its form. And the larks, three species of which bred in such profusion in the wilds beyond my home in north Mumbai have entirely gone, their celebrated, high song now a melancholy dream, heard only in the Godrej openlands offVikhroli.

Of the robust, winter-visiting Turnstone, I've had three sightings on Mumbai's beaches and creeks in the past two years. The romantic call of the Curfew has more or less vanished from the creeks, save for occasional sightings along Thane Creek. In the last three years I have seen a total of four Caspian Terns along the Manori Creek where dozens floated about every winter. And the once-abounding Baya Weaver, a claimant to the Best Avian Architect award, is on the verge of bidding a final adieu to Mumbai. A Palmyra near my home housed for seven years beginning the late seventies, what must rank as the largest nesting colony of this exuberant weaverbird on a single plant. In the rains of 1983, there were a record 160 nests dangling on this plant. Since 1990, not a single baya has made his nest on this Palmyra which still stands tall, waiting for wheezy excitement. All through the eighties, thee were monsoon nights I could almost not sleep on because of croaking frogs and boisterous waterhens. Bothhave departed. I never wanted to sleep so peacefully!

There are many more such observations. These may appear just random records from the diary, but there is an ominous significance to this. Mumbai's featherfolk are being affected for the worse. And no one seems to be knowing why it is all happening. Just like the frogs almost vanished by the dawn of this decade, and have showed no signs of making any comeback (this has been reported from other areas of the country and over parts of Europe and North America too), so could the birds unless we wake up now and at least begin to probe what ails our featherfolk and suggest remedial measures.

In more than a quarter century of serious bird-watching in the Mumbai region, nearly half of this in the company of the great bird-man, Humayun Abdulali, I've been fortunate to have enjoyed many memorable moments. But I would never want those to be mere memory. On rummaging through old diaries and notes, it was detected that sightings were reducing, of some species fasterthan of others. I haven't had a day with even two-thirds the species-count that my birding colleague Joslin and I had on January 7, 1984. On that day, along the main road of National Park, from the southern gate to near Kanheri, we had seen and heard 123 species! Yes, that was my bird-watching record for the Mumbai region and there hasn't been a day since when we've recorded even eighty species.

My total tally for Mumbai's National Park and its immediate surroundings is 269 species. For the Mumbai region, including the coast, creeks and some ponds add a further 19 species. That's 288 species in the Mumbai region. Of these, populations of at least thirty woodland species, and a further dozen, and possibly more, of coastal, scrub and grassland species appear to be showing a decline. It is not to suggest either that the rest are well-off. I must clarify that my assumption is based on direct sight and hearing records. However, it must also be specified that sightings and callnotes are the finest indicators ofany species' presence or absence in a locality.

That bird populations of our coastal species is on the decline is something that should've been expected, considering the drastic degradation of our creeks and other coastal habitats. Even the most casual layman would agree that the more or less final kill of our creeks has been done during the past decade. The only reason some birds have been regularly coming is that, as a layman colleague once remarked, ``in most birds the sense of smell is poorly developed.'' I wish this was not true.

However, the falling numbers of several species in the National Park and other adjoining woodland tracts should be cause for greater concern. Not just one, but nearly all the woodpecker species here are on the decline. And woodpeckers are generally believed to be a fine indicator of a woodland's wholeness. The Grey Junglefowl, though heard now and then, is yet another species whose plunging numbers are worrying. I feel bird-watchers, not just in the Mumbai region, butelsewhere over the country should get together and devise a strategy for estimating numbers and population density of not just the principal, super-star species but many of the birds occurring locally and generally perceived as being common.

The situation is serious also with our birds of prey or raptors as they are popularly known. My good friend Rishad Naoroji, who has been researching and photographing Indian raptors over the past two decades, informs we are losing out on our magnificent eagles, buzzards, hawks and falcons even before fully understanding the ill-effects of our damaging actions - habitat loss and poisoning due to use of insecticides and pesticides. ``In fact raptor populations worldwide are being depleted, and being at the top of the food chain, like tigers and lions, once these are affected set off a chain reaction whose ill-effects can be felt, over a period of time, right down to other animal communities,'' informs Rishad. Suddenly, one morning we woke up to find the White-backedVulture, of all birds, too had dissipated.

Birds, more than any other form of life, enamour us the most. We will have to take radical steps. Like working out some kind of a moratorium on further construction in the Mumbai region, or at least controlling it, and especially preserving the last surviving bits of creeks. Tragically also, nearly each and every one of the country's five hundred-plus Protected Areas is under grave threat. More than the birds conserving the last of our wilds, we need to control the beast in us. Saving the almost-vanished wilderness is not anti-development. It would be common sense. The birds will just come and hang around if we only let them.

Sunjoy Monga is a noted wildlife photographer