India has long been a land alive with birdsong. But something is changing.

Birds are slipping away – lost to vanishing habitats, pesticide use and to the hard lines of power cables and dams that redraw the land. Some absences, like that of the Great Indian Bustard and White-bellied Heron, are stark. But others are quieter, easier to miss. Birds once ‘common’, like drongos and rollers, no longer gather as they did. And the dawn chorus – once a bright, swelling thread stitching night to morning – softens, frays and fades.

Where have these birds gone? And what does their silence mean for us?

This book answers these questions through intimate, searching accounts of species we are fast losing – tracing not just their disappearance, but the story of a land on the brink of its own silent spring.

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