Who amongst bird keepers hasn’t at some time seen a bird and been overcome by the desire to own it? Since I only have a very narrow range of avian interest (finches) I don’t get tempted too often by what’s on sale at Cartimar but in early September I noticed a pair of Linnets for sale and although I was tempted I resisted and rhetorically I ask “Why”?  The birds themselves aren’t particularly colourful when not in breeding plumage as you can see from the photo (courtesy of Fortunecity) so I wondered what was their attraction here as supposedly they were locally bred but still cost P3000 for the pair.  In Europe they are considered to be a threatened species and here they are virtually unheard of so I was a little dismayed to see that by September 17 only the male had sold.  I don’t think many would covert the bird for it’s plumage so my guess is that it’s gone as a song-bird either directly or for a canary breeder to hybridize to alter their progeny’s song (listen on Youtube). With so few of these birds around, how can populations be sustained in the Philippines if the major market for rare birds are as trophy specimens or for breeders creating sterile hybrid progeny?  Clearly they can’t so many people must keep birds for reasons that I don’t appreciate or maybe I’m missing something.

Why do people keep birds?

There are many reasons why people keep birds and most societies let the justification belong to the individual keepers but there is a price in terms of the ecological and economic impact of keeping any animals and there is also a direct threat from zoonoses (diseases transmissable to humans).  Managing the biosecurity of our pastime is something that governments regulate which is why we have laws that protect wildlife, regulate trade and impose minimum standards for care (in some countries).   For the individual owner and society there are many human health benefits in pet ownership (see Pet therapy) but that’s not usually the motivation -it’s either business, pleasure or subsistence as shown in table 1.

 Table 1. Organisation of motives of the different types of birdkeeping

There is another motivation that I didn’t list and that is pathological bird collecting but I don’t know if I’ve seen it.  There is an allied hobby known as oology, egging or just egg collecting.  It was once considered a legitimate hobby but the drive to posses ever rarer eggs made it a threat to some species and so it publically unpopular so so it became illegal ( although I don’t know about there in the Philippines) .  The few egg collectors I hear of now (see the story in The Guardian) are often obsessive and destructive both to themselves and to the species they crave.  For those involved in egging each egg becomes a prized trophy in their private collection but seeking glory and acceptance by their peers doesn’t seem to be a motivating factor (See a related story on the BBC site). This now illegal hobby of egging is not without it’s positive side, as it was from studying collections through time that the link between the insecticide DDT and thinning egg-shells which were decimating some species was identified.

Intrinsically I find that partisipating in aviculture gives me pleasure so finding the root source of the pleasure can obviously be used to increasing the pleasure but likewise can be examined to curb any undesirable or destructive obsessions. So what gives me pleasure from my  form of aviculture?

1. Novelty - I like to have different types of birds but only to a point.
2. Completeness - I like to have complete themed collections.
3. I want to be able to breed what I keep so that it is sustainable and pays for itself.
4. I enjoy the routine and discipline of keeping birds.
5. I enjoy discovering and implementing the “secrets to successful keeping & breeding”.
6. I enjoy making an environment that is aesthetically pleasing which also functions to give my birds the opportunity to experience as full a range of natural behaviours as my budget allows.
7. I want to see that my birds are healthy, freed from stress and protected from danger.
8. I enjoy exchanging information about my hobby in order to increase my own success and those of others and to increase general public acceptance of aviculture.

There are other aspects in Aviculture that others may enjoy which, when I list them, aren’t important to me, go completely against my philosophy or they are just a fact of life: 

1. Showing - I think it’s too stressful to catch the birds both on me and the birds and yet I enjoy going to shows.  This is much less of a problem for caged rather than aviary housed birds.
2. Song - bird song doesn’t do it for me and I hate going into loud and over crowded bird-rooms and shops full of screeching parrots and deafening canaries.
3. Intensive farming of birds with it’s attendant practices- especially:
   • Interspecific fostering as a way of life
   • Small and/or overcrowded cages
4. Keeping for the sake of owning (I call it trophy keeping)
   • Keeping when the birds are beyond the ability of the owner to provide the correct conditions for the birds to thrive
   • Producing mutants or hybrids
   • Inbreeding - sometimes you just don’t have a choice but it’s best avoided
   • Keeping without regard to the origin of the birds especially the impact that taking wild-birds has on the sustainability of wild populations.
5. Keeping when only motivation is profit, especially commercial production without regard for welfare of the birds either individually or as a species

I would hate to see aviculture go the same was oology so it is important that as keepers we are aware that we must protect the interests of the birds we desire or we may find ourselves in the same category as the oologists.  That day may be a long way off but general aviculture doesn’t have much a positive public profile anywhere.  Even in the Philippines I’ve read more in the newspapers about opposition to captive animal keeping by animal rights groups like PETA than about about general aviculture and I won’t even touch on cock-fighting.  If I get the time and inclination there’s a lot more I could right on animal welfare and animal rights but that’s sure to get blood boiling so I’ll leave that for another time.

When I read what I put my profile (written 12 months ago) I aspired to place myself on a more commercial basis than I find myself in.  I was advised not to keep anything that didn’t pay for itself but I haven’t been able to live up to the ideal as I find that I have lots of unproductive birds - so why do I keep them? They obviously give me pleasure or I would have gotten rid of them even though they cost me money because of their direct costs (the food they consume) and the opportunity cost of maintaining birds that decrease the productivity of existing productive birds and take up space that could be used by more productive birds. When I look at these unproductive birds they are all monomorphic species (sexes appear the same) - shaft-tails, owls and munia’s.  To breed these in aviaries you need to have more than one or two pairs to choose from or you may not have a pair at all but I’m constrained by the price of these birds and by not wanting to deplete wild birds.

So in conclusion the Linnets did tempt me but the pleasure they might give me through novelty wasn’t enougt to out-weigh my reluctance to reduce the limited capacity of my aviaries for birds that I might value more. I know how my birds are sold at Carimar so I’m almost certain that they would have been siblings so inbreeding would have been the only option and I don’t go for song or non-Estrillids.  If suddenly a source of new types of Australian finch, African wax-bills or parrot-finches appeared on the market here then I’d be in trouble so I’d better build that new aviary just in case.