The high-resolution image of a lifer is to a birder what a new degree certificate is to an overqualified but still compulsive degree hoarder. For the elucidation of the chirp-challenged constituency, a lifer is a bird species a birder has clapped eyes on for the first time; and the rarer the feathers, the more treasured the photo of the bird that has been clicked. Birder Sagarika Gupta is disconsolate with the disappointment of a studious person who has completed a rare and brow-bending degree successfully, but is denied a certificate acknowledging it for some strange reason.
On April 21, during a morning walk at the Adyar Poonga, a Slaty-legged crake had crossed Sagarika’s path, and if she had ever bitterly regretted not having a camera with a telephoto lens at hand, this was the time.