National Birds Day is celebrated on the January 5 with this year’s theme, “A Bird in Flight is Poetry in Motion” focusing on promoting freedom and natural lives and bringing attention to the bird–human connection and combating the illegal bird trade. This day also aims on raising awareness about the vast variety of bird species and the urgent need to conserve their habitats, reducing obstruction, pollution and promoting bird-safe practices to ensure their survival. This day encourages activities like bird watching, creating bird-friendly spaces and educating others on avian welfare.
Each year, millions of birds are captured for commercial profit or human amusement, only to languish in conditions that fail to meet the instinctive behavioral and physical needs of these feathered animals. Confinement in cages can lead to neurotic behavior, excessive screaming, feather plucking, self-mutilation and other destructive habits.
The day also reminded people of the cultural role birds play. Birds appear in our stories, art and music, and they bring life to our surroundings. The celebration helped people appreciate their presence and understand why they need protection.
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Replacing the demand for birds as “pets” with a demand for preserving the species in the wild will reduce inherent welfare problems associated with captive birds while increasing the support of conservation efforts, such as ecotourism, that help local communities and protect wildlife by allowing people to see that birds are more beautiful in wild.
Whether they’re the morning sparrow or the common pigeons that flock in the courtyard, birds have always held a spot of fascination, love and adoration in our lives. Unfortunately, many birds are either endangered or protected due to climate change, deforestation, habitat loss or illegal pet trade and other life-threatening conditions.
Birds inspire us to value and safeguard the link to the past, being the closest-related animals to our evolution. They’re often keystone species in the ecosystems, signifiers of its health and vitality.
With the winter temperature dipping, more and more of our visiting guests start to land in our state. It’s a pride and pleasant to see these singing winged friends, chirping among themselves unfailingly kind and considerate.
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Birds are a group of warm-blooded vertebrate-Ave, characterized by feathers, toothless beaked jaws, the laying of hard-shelled eggs, a high metabolic rate, a four-chambered heart and a strong yet lightweight skeleton.
Throughout the years, birds take flight from tree to tree and place to place flapping their wings and singing the beautiful songs. They are a valuable part of nature’s ecosystem. While birds are amazing, they’re also a massive animal group under particular threat.
Birds are sentinel breeds whose plight serves as the barometers to our planet’s ecosystem and alert system for detecting global environmental health. The world is filled with a plethora of different species of birds. All birds have distinctive characteristics, behaviors and contributions.
Birds are one of the most magnificent living creatures we have on the planet. They significantly aid in seed dissemination, boost forest health, lower rodent and insect populations and preserve biodiversity. Wading birds are crucial for the control of wetland feeding species. Birds teach us critical lessons on the environment and mother nature.
The beauty, songs and flight of birds have long been sources of human inspiration. Birds are exploited in a number of ways with little thought about their welfare. They are used in research, but are not covered by the Animal Welfare Act as other animals and most of them are not included under the Wildlife Protection Acts, 1972.
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Birds bear witness to the triple planetary crisis of climate change, biodiversity loss and pollution. Making progress on reigning in climate change and ending biodiversity loss is critical to the survival of these feathered friends. Changing climate is impacting the annual cycles, habitats for breeding, the timing of migration, resting and refueling along the way and reproduction, causing mismatches in food availability. Birds over the world are again threatened from poisoning and collision with man-made objects, such as glass-covered buildings and high-power towers and lines.
On this day, bird lovers will focus on improving outdoor spaces for birds by installing birdhouses, placing water bowls, and growing plants that offer shelter to protect birds. Schools and community centers might organize drawing, awareness, talks, share bird pictures, stories and rallies. Social media will also play a strong role.
According to the IUCN, out of the 11000 bird species so far identified, almost 950 of them are on the verge of extinction and 4 have been ruled as extinct in the wild. Among the biodiversity richness of Manipur, the state owned 607 avian fauna species which is 40.61% of the country.
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The bird knows no political boundaries and therefore, we should not put the birds into our human crisis. Please think that birds can live without us but we can’t live without them. Thus, if we don’t care today, even in our lifetime, our beautiful winged friends may be wiped out from this world and our future generation may just see them on the walls and papers as a part of human history.
(The author is Environmentalist, presently working as DFO, Chandel. The views expressed are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of Ukhrul Times. Ukhrul Times values and encourages diverse perspectives. The author can be reached at nmunall@yahoo.in)