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Every Sunday, the children of Pisavare village wake up at the crack of dawn, gather their notebooks and pens, water bottles and hats, and set off into the wilderness of the Sahyadri mountains. Their aim is to spot as many birds as they can, identify the species, and make detailed notes about their characteristics and behaviour.
This activity is not merely a weekend pastime for the children, but an important task they undertake as residents of the "village of birds"—a name by which Pisavare is known across its taluka, Bhor, in Maharashtra’s Pune district. For the past decade, the village's youth have recorded more than 196 species of birds, including three types of owls, some 30 migratory birds, eagles and kites, and several kinds of herons and egrets, and have worked to conserve their populations locally. “It is hard to believe that what began as a school activity has become a mission for the entire village,” says Santosh Dalvi, an English teacher at the village school, and the person behind the initiative.
It all began as a small outdoor project that Dalvi set up in 2013. Students were asked to collect feathers and identify the birds they came from. An avid ornithophile, Dalvi wanted to share the art of birdwatching with them. The children enjoyed the activity so much that it became a regular fixture. Their excursions revealed that the village was teeming with sparrows—once abundant in western Maharashtra but now in decline in rural areas owing to changes in agriculture and land use. In 2018, a group of 30-odd children formed a birding group, Barn Owls, to protect and conserve the species.
“We began by building artificial nests for sparrows and distributing them among students to look after. Now there are as many as 200 sparrow nests in the school. You can hear their chirps as you approach the premises. The school is now known as the ‘sparrow school’,” says Aniket Sapte, a member of the group, now 25 years old.
Eventually the group began documenting several species and learning how to care for them. "We placed water bowls for birds during dry months, protected nesting sites, and even learned how to respond when chicks fell from their nests," says Sapte. Then, an idea emerged to confer titles on species towards which the village residents had affinity. "These include the Indian white eye, which the residents now regard as our 'village bird', and the striped tiger, our 'village butterfly'," says Sapte.
In 2025, the village residents agreed to promote Pisavare as a "village of birds", in the hope that it would not just expand their efforts but also help generate livelihoods so people do not have to leave in search of employment. "The initiative by the youngsters in the village has increased footfall of visitors in the village. We are now taking efforts to make village as a destination of bird tourism to help local employment as well," says Reshma Pradhan, former sarpanch of the village.
This story was first published in the Down To Earth print issue of May 16-31, 2026.
