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Dutch Ambassador to Inaugurate a Book on Birds of Kangra
Dharamsala 12 November: The Dutch Ambassador to India will visit Dharamshala to inaugurate a pictorial book on the birds of Kangra valley. The author ‘Birds of Kangra’, Jan Willem Den Besten, is a Dutch living in India working for the London based Tibet Information Centre’s Dharamshala office.
Ambassador F.Ch. Nieche will inaugurate the book at Hotel Haven Estate here this Saturday.
His Holiness the Dalai Lama welcomed the publication of the book saying that the author’s research proves the ‘extraordinary richness this small region offers to the world of ornithology’.
"Although Lhasa had fewer varieties of birds than Kangra, many songbirds were a source of delight in warmer seasons. Both my predecessor, the thirteenth Dalai lama, and I were particularly fond of the sound of Jolmo - a variety of blackbird. SO I was surprised and delighted when Jolmo, in the form of the Grey-winged Blackbird, started to arrive in my garden here over twenty years ago, and the numbers increased each year", His Holiness had said in a message to the author.
The author’s first brush with the Tibetan community dates back to early 90’s when he worked as a volunteer environment teacher at the Tibetan Children’s Village and set up a recycling programme in Dharamshala. He was born in the Netherlands in 1970. An environmental educator by training, his interest in the species and photography culminated into the book which took ten years of extensive research.
" For a bird watcher, Kangra is just incredible. About half of the known world population of Bar -headed Geese winters in the foothills of this part of the Himalayas at Pong wetland. And every year, a migration route of over 10,000 Steppe Eagles passes over Mcleod Ganj. The excitement of discovering these things is something I can’t express in words," says Jan den Besten.
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