Rakesh Khatri is teaching children in Old Delhi, India, the art of weaving sparrow nests. Known as the “Nest Man of India”, Khatri has shared his knowledge on nest building with thousands of children and adults to provide homes for sparrows during nesting season.

In a report by The Guardian, Khatri is seen at the ‘Happy School’ demonstrating to schoolchildren how jute, coconut fiber, and cotton can be threaded into a wooden frame. The children are then guided through building their very own sparrow nest.

In the report, Khatri points out how the expansion of residential homes in his area has destroyed the homes of other creatures.

He tells the children at the Happy School, “We can’t build our houses by taking away their homes.” 

The environmentalist took interest in sparrows back when he was a child. He explains to The Guardian how sparrows, whose natural habitats were destroyed, opted to live in the crannies of houses and shops. He and his childhood friends used to look out for the birds and feed them.

What sparked his interest in sparrows was their agility and resilience, as they were a constant source of joy for him.

The birds allowed the “Nest Man” to develop a wider appreciation for nature. In other parts of Delhi, Khatri noticed the scarcity of sparrows in the city. The rapid decline in sparrow populations since the 1990s became of great concern to him.

He narrates one of the incidents in which he saw sparrow homes being destroyed to The Guardian, “On my way to my office in south Delhi, I would see a large number of birds that would give me great joy. One day I saw a couple of men cementing the holes in the pipes where birds had taken refuge. When I told them I would file a complaint with the National Green Tribunal, they stopped immediately.”

This is the moment that changed the trajectory of Khatri’s life, who has since then devoted his life to the preservation of sparrows.

Sparrows were adopted as Delhi’s state bird in 2012. However, the species is still considered not to require significant conservation efforts by the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN). Anecdotal evidence suggests otherwise.

In his efforts to preserve the sparrow population, Khatri established the Eco Roots Foundation. Through the foundation, he taught children in more than 3,500 schools in India how to create the bird nest, leading to the creation of more than 100,000 nests. 

The achievements of the foundations can be spotted on the streets of Delhi, as Khatri points out on a walk, “We created these bird nests using empty Frooti juice boxes so that we could reuse these waste materials,” he says. “All the materials that we use are recyclable.”

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