India, Feb. 21 -- I vividly remember my first encounter with the great Indian bustard. It was on the outskirts of Bikaner in 2000. I was a young researcher, roaming the scrublands with more curiosity than knowledge. On one such outing accompanied by a few other researchers, I experienced a "not-seen-before" moment. The bird emerged first as an unidentifiable shape, tall and measured in its stride. Its sheer size, the way it rose into the air with slow, powerful wingbeats, left a lasting impression. In retrospect, that first sighting was also among the last in that landscape.

It is Rajasthan's state bird and once inhabited the vast open grasslands of Thar desert, far from human settlements. Its numbers were never large, even in the 1980s ...