Please Do Keep Birds Free [Archives:2000/16/Last Page]

Yasser M. Ahmed
Yemen Times
One wonders if the rapid changes in today’s world have made us also change and lose our sensation of the beauty of the nature crowned with birds’ singing. However, we have become ignorants of this beauty and deprived birds of protection so in return they deprived us their melodious singing.
Birds are very valuable to us human beings. They help us hunt mice and rats that can destroy our crops and stored weeds. They have also been a source of inspiration for scientists and poets. We shall not forget that birds inspired the idea of aviation. This has pushed scientists to study bird’s wings and how they thoroughly fly and made them capable of designing more powerful planes.
Human beings should be grateful to birds for they worn them from eminent dangers. Nowadays large quantities of deleterious chemicals that may kill humans if spread into the air, seas, rivers or the food that we eat (it is what we call pollution). Birds and we breathe, drink and eat from the same sources, therefore, if birds die in large numbers this could be a warning sign to us, humans, that a great danger is awaiting us. Birds are the gift of God to us and should be protected for their necessity is not restricted to one human or one country; they are important to all humans in this universe.
There are more than 9000 different kinds of birds in the world. They live in the highest mountain peaks, widest oceans, hottest deserts and coldest oceans and lands in the north and south of our planet. Each different kind is called “species”. Birds need three important factors to survive: a place with plentiful amount of food, another for breeding and building nests and to rest in at night. Each species has its own habits and moves that we call behavior. For example, there is a special hunting behavior for some birds, they move slowly and wait for the prey until it gets close to them. Some species move at very high speeds to hunt their preys and others make a combination of both. Birds have even their own language; they use certain sounds with a combination of moves of their wings and bodies to communicate. They usually breed when there are bountiful amounts of food that are enough to feed their babies. In many occasions they collect food near their nest. Birds have also their own special ways of breeding that prevent them form extinction. The breeding behavior starts with endearment where the mate tries to tempt the female by dancing and making musical sounds. Furthermore, birds are like humans in certain manner like in their need for immigration. Some species live, feed and breed in one place while other cross thousands of miles traveling from a place to another depending on the season and those are called immigrant birds.
We face dangers in our daily life and so do birds. These dangers threaten their lives and make them more vulnerable to extinction. They are being hunted and their environments like swamps and forests are being destroyed by human beings let alone the pollution that kills enormous numbers of birds annually.
In our country there are approximately (370) different species of birds of which there are 13 that only exist in Socatra and nowhere else in the world. In addition there are many immigrant birds that arrive in winter form Europe and Russia and others that arrive in summer from Africa, Europe and Asia.
Finally, God has created these birds to play an important role in this life not to mention that they were mentioned more than once in our holy Qur’an. I believe that by now we should understand the birds will always remain important to us. Therefore, we shall let them free and try not to be flippant with their lives.

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