January 5, 2009 is a special day — it’s National Bird Day!
“So what the heck is National Bird Day anyway?” you, or those you know, may ask.
Well, it’s complicated.
[teaserbreak]
“National Bird Day,” as Born Free USA united with API promotes it, is a special day set aside each year to appreciate our native wild birds. In recent years, the day has also been used as an occasion to raise awareness of the plight of the native birds of other countries brought to the U.S. through the pet trade.
However, the origin of “National Bird Day” is unknown. The day is commonly recorded in older calendars and has recently begun reappearing in calendars produced by humane societies and other animal advocacy organizations as a result of increased awareness in its renewed importance.
It is suspected that the day may have begun as a commemoration of the last day of the annual “Christmas Bird Count,” which is now in its 105th year. These annual Christmas Bird Counts have been an important conservation tool for tracking the population status of North American birds.
But the modern focus of National Bird Day is on captive birds and like the origins of National Bird Day — captive bird issues are complicated.
Each year, millions of birds are captured from the wild or produced in captivity for commercial profit or human amusement, only to languish in conditions that fail to meet the instinctive behavioral and physical needs of these wild animals.
In this way, captive birds are not unlike other wild animals that Born Free USA united with API works to protect — they are wild animals and in an ideal world they would not be confined to cages and would not be traded and sold like merchandise.
But we don’t live in an ideal world … yet.
There simply are not enough sanctuaries available to provide quality long term care for all the birds currently living in captivity, and for a variety of reasons the vast majority of captive birds cannot be returned to the wild (with the exception of recently captured wild-caught birds).
This is why in addition to information about the plight of captive birds and the bird trade we include information on the National Bird Day site on how individuals who have captive birds can best care for them.
So, the goal of the National Bird Day campaign is twofold — to improve the lives of birds currently living in captivity in the short term, and to restore and preserve their rightful place in the wild in the long term.
Maybe it’s not that complicated after all.
The birds need all the help they can get. Let’s make every day “National Bird Day”!
Blogging off,
Monica