Indonesia's songbirds need to be saved to sing

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This was published 8 years ago

Indonesia's songbirds need to be saved to sing

Songbird competitions in Indonesia are big business but there are fears the illegal bird trade is threatening some of Asia's most endangered species, writes Jewel Topsfield.

By Jewel Topsfield

The bird in cage 34 is mute. Its owner looks anguished; he is screaming and gesticulating in a desperate bid to get the bird to sing. The crowd is going ballistic. A barricade and a military officer holding a black flag separates the throng from rows of birds suspended in cages.

My head is throbbing with the noise and the heat. I've been ordered to take off my hat because anything – a red sunhat, the flash of a camera, could put the birds off-song.

This is serious stuff; millions of rupiah are at stake. Judges with clipboards are pacing, pausing below each cage to distinguish individual birdsong from the cacophony. The birds are assessed on volume, power, melody and their ability to mimic other birds' voices. Some sway, as if intoxicated, leading to names such as Dewa Mabuk. (Drunken God). Male songbirds are territorial creatures who can chirrup for more than 20 minutes to outsing their rivals.

A flag is placed on some of the stools below the cages. A red flag indicates 100 points, a blue flag 60 points and a green flag 40 points. At the end of each contest, the points are tallied. The roar of the crowd could rival the Guinness world record of 142.2 decibels set by Kansas City Chiefs fans in 2014. But this is not the USA, it's the Free York Bird Club in North Jakarta, which is hosting today's Perlombaan Burung, or bird-singing competition.

Aa Aa Bird Club co-founder Aris Margono with a white-rumped shama named Raden Hud-Hud NAD, who can mimic the songs of at least 10 other birds.

Aa Aa Bird Club co-founder Aris Margono with a white-rumped shama named Raden Hud-Hud NAD, who can mimic the songs of at least 10 other birds.

Bird-keeping is deeply rooted in Indonesian society, especially in Java and Bali. An old proverb says a successful Javanese man must have five things: a horse, a house, a wife, a kris (ceremonial dagger) and a bird in a cage.

Holding competitions between songbirds is inspired by the traditional Javanese practice of competitions between zebra doves, according to the former head of the Birdlife International-Indonesia program Dr Paul Jepson.

Jepson writes on the blogspot Birdkeeping Indonesia that in the mid-1970s a group of bird connoisseurs amongst the Jakarta rich started competing Chinese laughing thrushes – a new import to Java at the time – and to add spice to the sport they started betting on the result and awarding fabulous prizes.

"It wasn't long before enterprising villagers started bringing orange-headed thrushes to town with the message "Why pay 40 pounds [$86] for a Chinese import when our local bird is a superior songster and we will sell one for two pounds? [1970s prices]."

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But the songbird hobby really took off during the Asian economic crisis of 1997 to 1998, he says, when many men were made redundant.

"The hobby itself provides numerous small businesses opportunities, for example in the production of cages and equipment, as a buyer and seller of 'prospects', as a personal songbird trainer [known as a jockey] and in bird breeding."

Research published in 2011 by Jepson and Richard Ladle found bird-keeping contributed an estimated $US78.8 million a year to the economies of Java and Bali's six largest cities.

However kicau-mania – as the bird-singing competition craze is known – is contributing to declining songbird populations throughout Indonesia. (The birds are also vulnerable to their habitats being cleared for logging or the planting of monoculture crops such as palm oil.)

We can hardly find it in the wild now because people are hunting them.

Ria Sariyanthi, Birdlife Indonesia Association

A survey in September of three bird markets in Jakarta by TRAFFIC, the wildlife trade monitoring network, highlighted the illegal bird trade in Indonesia, which has the highest number of threatened bird species in Asia.

TRAFFIC says 98 per cent of the 19,000 birds found at the markets over a three day period were harvested outside of the national harvest quota system or in direct violation of laws protecting select species. Most were considered to be caught in the wild.

"Songbird competitions have also added to the demand of certain prized birds and increased pressure on these species in the wild," TRAFFIC says in a press release. "As a result, a number of species are in real danger of being wiped out by the trade."

Raden Hud Hud NAD is so decorated someone recently offered to swap him for a Toyota Fortuner SUV. In September the white-rumped shama was runner-up in the Raja Cup in Yogyakarta, one of the most prestigious national songbird competitions.

Hud Hud can imitate at least 10 birds including canaries, lovebirds and cililin," boasts Aris Margono, the co-founder of Aa Aa Bird Club.

"When we won second someone was interested in him. There is a mysterious belief that if you name a price for the bird, the bird will die. So they just asked to barter him with a car."

Raden Hud Hud NAD is named after one of King Solomon's birds Hud-Hud, who was said to be able to communicate with humans. He was bought from a Muslim cleric in Aceh, who insisted the bird's name not be changed.

"Thank God we always win competitions," says Raden Hud Hud NAD's caretaker Hendra. "The money is not much, but the most important thing is the pride."

But the population of Raden Hud Hud NAD's species is decreasing, says Birdlife Indonesia Association (Burung Indonesia) spokesperson Ria Sariyanthi.

"We can hardly find it in the wild now because people are hunting them. So we encourage people who have the hobby of collecting birds to get them from a breeder."

Aa Aa Bird Club founder Margono now breeds songbirds himself in East Java, including white-rumped shama and the critically endangered Bali mynah, known locally as jalak Bali.

"They would otherwise be extinct because people love to catch them in the forest and sell them for money."

Margono says there is a category in the bird-singing competitions for birds bred in captivity. They are identified by bands on their feet which are slipped on when the birds are just a few days old and their bones still flexible enough to bend.

"The Pelestari Burung Indonesia [Indonesian Ornithological Society] said that contest birds will gradually come from captivity-bred birds," Margono says. "It is aimed at preserving birds in Indonesia."

But the Birdlife Indonesia Association says a short-term target for all birds to be captive-bred is difficult to realise because of the age of most people who compete in songbird competitions. Maybe a 10-year deadline is realistic, says Sariyanthi.

"If we have to talk to young people, say 25 years old, it's easy. But these people are mostly above 50 years. They simply believe there are always many birds in the wild."

Thousands of Indonesians participate in bird-singing competitions. One of them, Deddy Setiawan, is a doctor in the emergency ward of a hospital in Jakarta. He owns 12 songbirds.

"I started collecting birds because I love the voices," he says. "Listening to birds voices will help you handle your stress."

Preparation for the contests is elaborate. Training involves placing the cages of songbirds near "master" birds, so they can learn to copy other voices.

"Birds are like people," says Deddy, who is the head of the Free York Bird Club. "If they listen to other birds singing they will sing too."

There is also the songbird equivalent of carb loading. "Exactly one day before the competition you don't bathe them or put them in the sun," Deddy says. "You just rest the birds and give them extra food – eggs of ants, maggots and larger amounts than usual."

It is, however, a finely calibrated affair. "Especially with lovebirds, you can't give them too much corn or it will make them horny," says Margono, the founder of rival Aa Aa Bird Club.

"If they are horny, they won't produce imitation voices, they just use their own voice. They need sufficient corn, but not too much, which you will learn if you know the bird."

The owner of Mega Bird Farm in Bogor, Megananda, first competed in a birdsong competition in the 1970s when he was a university student in Bandung.

"My dad was a bird lover and so was my grandfather." They trapped their birds in forests: "We didn't care, we just caught them from anywhere. But in the 1990s, we started to realise that the population of birds in the wild were going down."

In the late 1990s, Megananda started breeding birds in captivity in Bogor. "As time went on people started to realise that they need breeding programs to supply the demand for songbirds. They saw it was possible to breed white-rumped shama and straw-headed bulbul and later on other kinds of songbirds."

Megananda believes songbird contests are part of the fabric of Indonesian society. Many fanciers are so passionate they even use their bird's song as a ringtone on their mobile phones. "It's big money," he says. "The government cannot stop bird singing competitions because it generates the economy in villages."

The head of the advisory board of the Indonesian Ornithological Society (PBI), Made Sri Prana, says there were no local breeders in 1998. "In 2015 … there are more than 700 breeders of songbirds."

He says it is now compulsory for three songbirds to be bred in captivity – the straw-headed bulbul, the oriental magpie-robin and the chestnut-capped thrush. From 2017, the white-rumped shama must also only be bred in captivity, although Mr Prana concedes these regulations only apply within the bird conservation community. Even so, "it is good progress", he says.

With Karuni Rompies

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