Simply Citified!

It was a mundane Monday for me. Everyone was at home because it was a Public Holiday (Eid holiday), and that made me lazy. Though it was a public holiday, I had to wake up early and rush off to music lesson at Braddell with my sister.

As if to emphasize on how mundane my Monday was, I found it extremely amusing that we saw an entire family wearing Orange - completely orange - in the MRT. There was the dad, wearing all orange, including orange shoes, the mom, wearing an orange dress, shoes, and accessories, and a baby dressed in orange, with orange shoes, strapped into an orange stroller. Seriously, the Annoying orange would have been very jealous of them. Families (sometimes even extended families) dressed in one colour are a very common sight in Singapore during the Eid season. It's called Hari Raya here, in the Malay Language. It's a very colourful and joyous festival here. I'd celebrated it with my malay friends before. I'll write more about that in another post.

Back to the topic at hand.

So, we were late and as such, ended up running like a mad dog was chasing us all the way from the MRT station to our class. If we'd walked we'd have taken anywhere from 7 to 10 minutes to reach. Since we ran, we reached in about 5 minutes. Not a notable achievement. We were still late.

After an hour of lesson, we were done and on our way back to the MRT station, when we passed by this:

I remembered seeing "bird gatherings" of this kind long before, but I never really knew what exactly happens there. All I could see was a huge bunch of uncles sitting around chatting and laughing, occasionally glancing up at the birds and talking about it. Then there were the birds, all caged up and cages hung close to each other. There was only one bird in every cage, and the birds didn't seem to be very upset about being caged up. They were singing away. Then again, we can't know that for sure now, could we? They could have been crying for freedom all the same, and we fail to realize it since we do not speak bird language. 

So today I made up my mind to find out what this was about. And I did. Apparently, I do not know how, but this gathering is supposed to serve as vocal training for these birds. These birds are actually songbirds, and the most commonly found species of songbirds in these kinds of gatherings are Jambul, Shama and Mata Puteh.

The Jambul

Picture taken from roy-nadzri.blogspot.sg

Also called the Red Whiskered Bulbul because of the red feathers near its eyes, it is native to South Asia, and can be found in Singapore, Malaysia and even India.

It grows to about 20 cm in length and has an average lifespan of about 11 years.

These birds are highly sought after to be kept as pets, because they are easily trained and have a fearless disposition.

The Shama

Picture taken from Wikipedia

Short form for White-Rumped Shama. This Shama is a sub-species of the Magpie Robins, and are native to Asia. In fact, the name Shama comes from the Hindi Language (India).

Though native to Asia, these days they can be found in places as far as Hawaii. This is the result of caged birds escaping into the wild once they have been brought over to those new territories.

The rich and melodious voice of these birds is what makes it so attractive to pet owners. Sometimes they even mimic the calls of other birds.

The birds normally found in the above mentioned cages here are usually male Shamas, for they're main attraction is their long tail with white under-feather, which the females do not possess.

Picture taken from www.stamps-for-sale.com

The Shamas have even been featured on the Singapore stamp.

The Mata Puteh

Picture taken from www.rafflesgold.com

As I did more research I found out that bird gathering has been a local hobby for a very long time. There are various locations where these gatherings are held. They're mostly held at the old neighbourhoods of Singapore, like Toa Payoh, Ang Mo Kio, Bishan, Jurong East, Bukit Batok, Bedok and Tanjong Pagar (Braddell is part of Toa Payoh).

Now there must be a question lingering in your mind as to why these people need to train their birds to sing at all. That's because there are various Songbird singing competitions held around Singapore. The birds are judged based on their performance in these 4 categories:

1. How long the bird can sing.
2. How loud it is and the quality of its voice.
3. How it displays itself in the cage (as if being caged up wasn't bad enough).
4. The different tones and phrases these birds can sing.

Now, can someone please tell me how exactly you can train a bird to do all this, by simply allowing them to meet other birds in cages?

The birds that are more aggressive will fly around a lot, and make a lot of noise, with a variety of call patterns. So that is how they select the winner.

I find it really upsetting that humans resort to not only caging up birds, but also to actually participate in such competitions. One might think there's nothing wrong with keeping songbirds as pets.

Birds, are not like cats or dogs.

We bring cats and dogs outside at least once a day to let them enjoy walking in an open space, for a change from being locked up inside our apartment flats. Do we give birds that kind of freedom, when we keep them as our so called "pets"?

No.

Birds, of all animals, that are supposed to fly freely and roam the vast blue skies, are locked up in cages and just left to hang by the windows, as if that would compensate for what we're holding them back from.

If you really love birds, you should take up Bird Watching as a hobby, instead of watching caged birds sing for you. Anyway, you're not exactly listening to those birds sing when you gather with your buddies at coffee shops. You're just letting those birds chirp there and having your own chit chat session with the other bird owners.

If you're a true blue bird lover, you should take the time and effort to truly enjoy Mother Nature at her best, and find these beautiful songbirds in nature reserves and enjoy their songs in the tranquil environment amid soft breezes and the smell of trees.

Would listening to a caged bird singing bring you as much joy as watching a bird sing in nature like this?



Nothing would beat the joy of being able to find these beautiful birds in their natural habitat singing their songs in celebration of their freedom, for the world to hear.

Spending time to find places where you can find these native birds, then going in search of them and eventually finding them and listening to their song is much much more worth it than caging them up for your selfish pleasure of hearing their songs. Caging them up for that reason just goes to show your ignorance and how lazy you are.

The joy of finding a bird after searching for it is unparalleled. You have to try it to understand it.

This is a post from my old blog. It was posted sometime in August 2012.