Dr. Bishan Monnappa is an orthopaedic surgeon based in Gonikoppal, Kodagu, where he has practised for many years. His fieldwork as a naturalist and wildlife photographer is rooted in the same forests and estates he calls home — the landscapes of Coorg that he has spent a lifetime learning to read.
Widely regarded as one of the Bird-men of Kodagu, Bishan has spent decades documenting the avifauna and wildlife of the Western Ghats. His 2012 photograph of the Lesser Florican in Kodagu was a significant ornithological record, confirming the presence of this rare grassland bird in Karnataka. His work has been published in Sanctuary Asia, one of India's foremost conservation publications, including a celebrated image of synchronous fireflies in Coorg — a photograph that required two years of nightly fieldwork to capture.
His travels from Kanyakumari to Leh-Ladakh have taken him through some of India's most ecologically significant terrain, but it is the forests and estates of Kodagu that remain the constant subject of his lens — observed with the patience and precision of both a naturalist and a surgeon.
