Trapping wild songbirds is illegal in Cuba but has long been socially accepted as a tradition, says one ornithologist
, a collective riot of color and song, were in high demand. Sundays were popular for songbird competitions.
Officers with the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission carry seized birdcages and traps. Nearby, an entire shed is filled with such confiscated items, underscoring the scale of illegal trapping around Miami.Keeping caged birds is seen as a tradition by many Cubans, “so despite it being a violation, it has been something socially accepted,” says Maikel Cañizares, an ornithologist at the Ministry of Science, Technology and Environment.
“The amount of money to be made from [the songbird trade] is pretty limited,” says Lillian Guerra, professor of Cuban and Caribbean history at the University of Florida. On Facebook, some birds may be advertised for no more than $20. Competition wagers vary widely—up to thousands of dollars. To track the migration of painted buntings, five years ago Rushing and his team used nets to catch the birds in their breeding grounds in Florida and other states. The team put ID bands around the birds’ ankles, fitted them with tiny backpacks containing geolocators, and released them. The researchers found that buntings migrating all the way to wintering grounds in Cuba were 20 percent less likely to return north than birds making shorter journeys.
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