Little Stint: A Migrant's Tale

How can a bird weighing just 25 grams cross continents, seas and mountains, and find its way back to the same distant shores year after year? Little Stint: A Migrant's Tale follows one such traveller from the endless light of the Arctic tundra, across the steppes of Central Asia, over the Caspian Sea and the high mountains of Tibet, to the lagoons, islands and mudflats of the Gulf of Mannar.

Told through the eyes of the bird itself, the book turns an abstract migration into a story of food, memory and survival: of winds that become allies, storms that test endurance, and unfamiliar wetlands that offer fleeting refuge. Along the way it introduces the people, landscapes and creatures the Little Stint meets, including those who protect these fragile travellers and those who threaten the places they depend on.

Blending firsthand fieldwork with scientific discovery, it brings to life bird ringing, migration routes, tidal rhythms, monsoons and climate change, an accessible journey into the secret life of one of the world's smallest long-distance migrants.

Shorebirds like the Little Stint travel the Central Asian Flyway, linking Arctic breeding grounds to the wetlands of India and Sri Lanka. Their survival depends on a chain of coastal stopovers, many of them under pressure from development and a changing climate. By following a single bird across that chain, Little Stint makes the case for protecting the mudflats and lagoons of India's southeastern coast that migratory birds cannot do without.