A Brief History
On May 4, 1894, educator Charles Babcock, superintendent of Oil City, Pennsylvania schools, established “Bird Day” on May 4 in order to advance the celebration and conservation of our feathered friends.
Digging Deeper
Other “Bird Days” include International Bird Day (April 13) and International Migratory Bird Day (second Saturday in May, or May 13 this year). The 2017 theme is Stopover Sites: Helping Birds Along the Way.
As birds are extremely important to the environment and to the welfare of mankind, we will take a moment to recognize some of their important contributions to the ecology. For one thing, a lot of birds eat a lot of insects! Without mosquito eating birds such as Purple Martins we may be overwhelmed with the biting pests. A large flock of seagulls saved the Mormons in Utah from a plague of grasshoppers (or crickets) back in 1848, which is why landlocked Utah has a sea going state bird. The providential appearance of Quail had saved the Mormons from starving only 2 years previous to that. Birds such as Hummingbirds help pollinate flowers and other fruit and seed eating birds help spread seeds and plants. Water birds inadvertently carry fish and amphibian eggs from body of water to body of water spreading the diversity of water species. Vultures and their kin keep our land clean of rotting corpses of animals, and raptors keep the rodent population in check.
Of course, humans probably learned early on that birds are good to eat (they taste like chicken), and birds have supplied man with food for hundreds of thousands of years. Additionally, the feathers and feathered pelts of birds have been used to create warm clothing and stuffing for mattresses and pillows, and the skins have made attractive and stylish leather (notably Ostrich). Stone age man and aboriginal peoples have also used bird bones as musical instruments and small tools, such as sewing needles and awls. The fletching on arrows has been made of feathers until only recently in History. Having a talking bird such as a Parrot in the house can be highly amusing. We even use roosters as alarm clocks and geese as watch dogs.
Birds have also provided amusement and decoration for people, kept as pets, in preserves, or even (unfortunately) by taxidermy. The use of feathers as decorations for hats and clothes nearly drove some birds to extinction. People have not always been considerate of the welfare of birds, which is why so many have gone extinct in the last few hundred years (Great Auk, Passenger Pigeon, Dodo, etc). Sporting magazines urged hunters to shoot and kill hawks whenever they could as recently as the 1950’s and early 1960’s! The use of DDT, poison baits for coyotes and wolves, lead shotgun pellets and other pollution effects have grossly affected birds in a bad way. So has habitat loss, a key for birds such as Woodpeckers.
Question for students (and subscribers): Do you keep a bird for a pet or a bird feeder to watch the flying kin of dinosaurs? (The author keeps a seed feeder, a suet feeder, and a Hummingbird nectar feeder.) Please feel free to share your bird stories with us or tell us which is your favorite bird and why in the comments section below this article. Happy Bird Day!
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Historical Evidence
For more information, please see…
Sams II, Carl R. Happy Bird Day! Carl R. Sams II Photography, 2012.