No Birds, No Humans
Every bright beautiful morning, we are woken up with classic all time unique natural orchestra. I hear the pianos sometimes other times it’s a violin, some other times I think it’s the trumpet. Am startled too, am always left curious just to see the kind of birds that produce the different notes and instruments all at once without having to pay for a luxurious hotel or better still a music concert. If it ever happens that one day the birds go on a strike, I will have the saddest day of my life. Just like me, I know most people are woken up by the sound of the birds. I can’t count the times I have sat on my balcony in the evening to watch the sun set and my ears keen to the sound of the evening songs from the birds. Its marvelous graces to my soul that one that you can’t explain in words.
Birds are very important members of any ecosystem; they pollinate flowers and disperse seeds. This makes them an integral part of food chains and food webs. They are found in almost all ecological units all over the world and are categorized as the second diverse organism after microscopic organisms.
So, have you thought about, what you would do if all the birds go missing one morning? Your answers will vary depending on the perception and attitude you have towards birds. Me I will definitely get depressed and may never recover. Perhaps, I will spend the rest of my life in some psychiatric hospital asking the doctors to make me sleep all through till I finally breathe my last.
Birds as many other wild animals, face numerous threats ranging from poor agricultural practices, poaching, deforestation, oil spills and unsustainable infrastructure development. This means a lot needs to be done to ensure that birds do not go missing on us.
This year 2018 is the 100th anniversary of the Migratory Bird Treaty Act, which has been a pivot for the conservation of birds. To celebrate birds this year, go out and just listen to them sing, watch them, and learn their names. You will be fascinated how wonderful birds are. Bird watching is associated with some weirdo’s. What most people do not realize is that it is a very refreshing activity to do. The sound of the birds doesn’t destroy your ears drums like the earphones we forever stick to our ears or better still the loud music we are addicted to.
Join me at TonyWild, www.tonywild.co.ke as we tell stories of conservation using pictures. Pictures they say are worth a thousand words. Well, that’s my way of preserving mother earth, what is yours?
Do not just enjoy the sweet meat of chicken and yet you have no idea what it takes to rear chicken or even feed it with two or three grains of maize. Why don’t you start a project of rearing chicken this year, it’s not too late to come up with a last minute 2018 resolution. It will pay off, in the end you will not have learnt about this special kind of bird but also incur profits and perhaps grow fat from the proteins. Again, am sure we all want to keep listening to the birds sing every morning and evening. Great, I want that too. How do we keep their voices up and melodious ? By ensuring that we take care of the environment. Plant and protect trees, avoid poisonous insecticides on your farms because some birds feed from the farms , keep the water bodies clean and stop illegal hunting of the birds with that, we would have conserved the second diverse unit of the ecosystem.
