People regard him as the ‘Nest Man of India’. But among the avian community, he’s their favourite architect. To know why, turn your gaze to the 7,30,000 nests, sprawled across the country’s urban landscape, all built by Rakesh Khatri. His initial nest-making efforts in 2008 were met with critique — “Sparrows build their own nests. What makes you think they’ll choose yours?” But he continued to scour his home city of Delhi, laden with jute and rope. The first-ever nest he set up was in the city’s Mayur Vihar area.
Enthusiasm soon gave way to scepticism. But all doubts were dispelled in a couple of days by a chorus of chirps that came from within the nest. The home’s new occupants seemed pleased.
Through the last 14 years, magpies, robins, sparrows and bulbuls have found comfort in these dwellings that Rakesh has been engineering. The 63-year-old environmentalist is hopeful for a resurgence in bird numbers, especially those of the house sparrow, which according to a national-level assessment, is on the decline across six metro cities: Bengaluru, Chennai, Delhi, Hyderabad, Kolkata, and Mumbai.
Losing sparrows will have a cascading effect that will impact the entire ecosystem. While cellphone towers are the most popular culprits, the report suggested that a paucity of nests might also be to blame.
The ‘Earth Champion’ who is ensuring sparrows make a comeback to the cities
Think back to your childhood and you’ll find the house sparrow intricately intertwined into most stories you’ve grown up hearing. But their roles are more than fabled. The sparrows have enjoyed a bird’s eye view of our cities, silently documenting decades of social change. They’ve had to brave the throes of urbanisation as grey (the concrete jungle) substituted green and eventually stifled their numbers.
But, now, Rakesh wants to assure them that the city is as much theirs as it is ours. He recalls a conversation with a gardener who advised him, “Don’t stop making nests. You are giving the sparrows a home — the same one that we have snatched away from them.” And this, Rakesh says, keeps him going.
His grandfather would be thrilled about his grandson’s noble mission. He’d probably chuckle at how his attitude towards the sparrows has taken a complete 180-degree turn. “I used to catch sparrows when I was a child,” Rakesh explains. “They used to make their nests on top of the fans in our home. My grandfather would warn me that if I switched the fan on, I would get into trouble.” Those days are long behind him. School was followed by college, which was followed by years of documentary filmmaking.
Recalling the time he had just resigned from one of his roles, he shares how he was in a proverbial slump. The garden near his house was his favourite retreat. And, the sparrows and squirrels never failed to check in on him. “Now that I think of it, that’s probably how I tided through that phase,” he smiles.
It was in 2008 that Rakesh, realising that the corner office would never rival the happiness he felt when he was around birds, decided to turn all his attention to nest-making. And the accolades that followed — the National Science Award (2020), mention in the Limca Book of World Records (2018), the International Green Apple Award (2013), Earth Day Network Star (2020), membership with the IUCN (2020), and being named ‘Earth Champion’ by Sony BBC Earth (2025) for his contributions to bird conservation — were proof of the ripples of the impact his work was creating.
Creating change through empowerment
One morning a few years ago, Rakesh received a letter. It was from an 85-year-old Bengaluru-based gynaecologist whom he had taught to make a nest. The letter read, “I have delivered many babies in my lifetime. But the joy I felt when I gave a sparrow a home was something very different.” The doctor had hung the nest she made on the balcony of her first-floor home in Bengaluru and it wasn’t long before a family of sparrows made a beeline for it.
While jute, rope, and empty coconut shells stuffed with newspaper formed the scaffolding of his primitive nests, Rakesh has now transitioned to more eco-friendly alternatives. Think water hyacinth. Elaborating on the dual benefits this has, Rakesh says, “I’m giving the birds a home while cleaning the lakes.” He is referring to how water hyacinths gobble up aquatic oxygen leading to asphyxiation.
Through operation ‘Jal Sparsh’, Rakesh and 2,000 women across Bihar, Uttar Pradesh, and Haryana are de-suffocating the lakes. “The women collect and dry the water hyacinths and then make nests with them,” Rakesh explains. This is one of the projects under the umbrella of his ‘Eco Roots Foundation’, which drives environmental action, ecological conservation, and women empowerment. The attempt is to lift communities out of poverty through sustainable income generation, self-reliance, and entrepreneurship.
Take, for instance, their Uttarakhand project, which turns local women into brand ambassadors of value-added products made from native buransh and malta plants. Meanwhile, across four biodiversity hotspots — the Okhla Bird Sanctuary, Noida, Lucknow Zoo, Dudhwa Lion Safari and Pilibhit Nature Park — women take charge as nature guides.
Since its early days, the Eco Roots Foundation has taken a keen interest in including students in the impending revolution. Through nature trails, they are guided to identify the native flora and fauna of the region, thus sensitising them to biodiversity. In every school nest-making workshop — Rakesh has conducted 7,000 of these — students are trained in building birdhouses and nests, followed by a session where they zero in on the best spots for these.
Together, Rakesh and these young minds are giving impetus to the sparrow numbers, encouraging the birds to return to the city whose urbanisation made them feel unwelcome. And Rakesh doesn’t see this as work. “There is no bigger blessing in this world than when you give someone a home. And that’s just what I am doing,” he concludes.
Edited by Khushi Arora, All images courtesy Rakesh Khatri
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