by Pajarita » Sun May 07, 2017 10:09 am
Indeed, Steve! I agree 100% but wild birds should remain wild birds. I feel VERY strongly about this subject and not only because I believe in this as a general principle but also because I have personally seen what poaching does to a species. Back home, we have a beautiful species of cardinal, here it's called the Red Crested (there were yellow and blue crested, also, but they are now extinct) Brazilian Cardinal but that's only because the very first ones imported into USA to be used as breeders were from Brazil because this species is found in other South American countries, too. When I was a young girl, you would see them all the time and all over the place but because they are so pretty and have a beautiful song, people used to trap them and put them in cages to be kept as pets with the consequence that, nowadays, they are in danger of extinction and you hardly see any anymore. They have become so rare that I got an email from a cousin last year just to let me know that she had seen one in her garden (she lives on the seaside) after years of not seeing a single one - that's how unusual it is to see them nowadays. And it wasn't because of their losing their natural habitat or anything else but plain old poaching...