The birder who refuses to let a hill disappear in Pune: How a quiet community of birdwatchers continue to save Pune's highest hill

Cities often lose their natural spaces gradually. A road appears where a trail once existed, a construction site replaces a grove of trees, and over time a landscape that people once knew simply fades away.

In rapidly expanding urban centres, such changes are often accepted as inevitable. Yet sometimes a place survives because people begin to see it differently. The story was the same for Vetal Tekdi, Pune’s highest hill.But we are talking about Vetal Tekdi because a change in perception came for the gentle, quiet hill, not through aggressive protests and morchas, but through binoculars, bird calls, and the persistence of a small group of nature lovers.

At the centre of this story is Pune-based avid birder Ranjeet Rane, a public policy professional, and a birder and nature lover by choice. His curiosity about the hill gradually evolved into a community-driven effort that highlighted the ecological value of the landscape.

The backdrop of an unusual ‘public movement’

Ranjeet’s involvement with Vetal Tekdi began after he moved back to Pune from the Delhi–NCR region. Returning to the city meant reconnecting with familiar places, and like many Punekars, he felt a strong connection to the city’s hills.

Vetal Tekdi was one of those landscapes that had always been part of the city’s identity. Sometimes ignored, misused, but always present. Then came the day Ranjeet observed something unusual on the way to Vetal Tekdi. The road leading to the tekdi had been blocked with construction barricades. Access to the hill was restricted. Period.Curious and concerned, Ranjeet began asking questions. Through platforms like X he reached out to members of the Vetal Tekdi Bachav Kruti Samiti (VTBKS), a loosely bound group of citizen volunteers engaged in conservation of the tekdi. The explanations he heard were troubling: three infrastructure projects cutting across the tekdi would spell doom for the rich biodiversity of this hill complex.

For Ranjeet, the moment was unsettling. A place that had been freely accessible since his childhood was suddenly off limits. The hill that had always been part of Pune’s open landscape was now under restriction. Instead of accepting the situation and walking away, he decided to understand the hill more deeply. And there was only one way to do that. Walk the landscape.

Looking at the hill through a birder’s eyes

Ranjeet had long been an avid birdwatcher. For him, exploring a landscape meant observing it carefully, listening to bird calls, scanning the skyline for raptors, and paying attention to the subtle movements of wildlife.

As he began spending more time on Vetal Tekdi, he started noticing something remarkable. The old hill was full of birds, not at all your run-of-the-mill hill. The hill had character.

His silent walks around the tekdi made one thing clear to him – Vetal Tekdi was not simply open land, it was a functioning ecosystem. Raptors circled above the ridges, smaller birds moved through the scrub forests and grasslands, migratory species appeared during the winter months…Soon he realised that sharing the experience could help others appreciate the hill in a new way.He began inviting a few people along on informal birding walks. In the early days, participation was modest, sometimes just two or three curious individuals who joined him on weekend mornings. Ranjeet started spreading the word about these bird walks through social media, using platforms like @IndiAves on X, and through WhatsApp groups and Facebook communities. He began announcing small birdwatching outings scheduled for weekends and public holidays.

The idea was simple: gather a few people, walk the hill slowly, and observe the birds.At first, the walks remained small and informal. But something interesting happened as word spread. Participants who joined the walks began discovering birds they had never noticed before in their own city. To others, suddenly, the hill began to look different. He won’t admit it now, but it sure started to look like the growth of a quiet movement, and in a good way. More people began joining the bird walks—students, photographers, families, curious residents who wanted to learn more about the wildlife around them, and sometimes, an odd one or two who just wanted to see what the fuss was all about.

Over time, birdwatchers would document more than 160 bird species in the broader hill complex, an impressive number for a landscape located inside a major Indian city. The European honey buzzard sighted at this location is the only record of this species in the state of Maharashtra. The increase in data also helped establish Vetal Tekdi as an important birding site in Pune. Bird walks that earlier had only two or three participants at Vetal Tekdi now have large numbers. Today, there are bird walks that have as many as 50 participants, from diverse age groups. And to manage these increased numbers, there is now a dedicated team of about 10 volunteers who help manage these bird walks and guide participants on the trails.

What had once been a solitary birder exploring a hill had gradually grown into a community of observers.

Vetal Tekdi and the Great Backyard Bird Count

The annual Great Backyard Bird Count is a global citizen science initiative organised by institutions such as the Cornell Lab of Ornithology and the National Audubon Society. Birders from across the world record birds they observe over a four-day period and then upload the data online on platforms like eBird. The results help scientists monitor bird populations and migration trends globally.

In Pune, birdwatchers, including Ranjeet and his fellow volunteers, organised observation sessions across the city during the count. Vetal Tekdi quickly emerged as one of the most productive birding hotspots during these events. During the 2026 Great Backyard Bird Count, the city of Pune recorded 248 species of birds. Under this umbrella figure, Vetal Tekdi recorded 132 species of birds. Such as the Eurasian hobby, Indian Thick-knee, white-eyed buzzard, rock-bush quail to name a few.Participants who once visited the hill simply for exercise began noticing wildlife they had previously overlooked. But perhaps the hill’s greatest success lies in how people have come to see it. Thanks to the quiet persistence of birdwatchers, and the efforts of people like Ranjeet, Vetal Tekdi is no longer seen as something that is also there today but more of something that needs to be there tomorrow.