Thai people regularly make merit as part of their commitment to shed the sins of their outer man and keep the inner man pure and clean within. One way they do this is by releasing animals such as fish or birds into the wild.
The belief is that the sins one has accumulated will be borne away with the creature and the person who did the honorable deed of freeing a caged animal will be blessed by the gods for his mercy and kindness to the children of Mother Nature.
However, in order to release the animal, someone must do the sinful task of capturing the animals so they can be released.
The people who do the trapping are usually poor, uneducated locals who may be superstitious but perhaps feel resigned to their fate of spending their lives as poor peasants. The sins they accumulate in caging these animals may be recycled into a future life of poverty and pain, but it’s a risk they are willing to take, especially if there is money to be made in the venture.
As usual, birds are netted and packed into cages where they are shipped off to trading markets such as Chatuchak in Bangkok. From here they make their way into provinces all over Thailand, where they are sold at local markets or temples.
It would be a conservative estimate to assume that half of the birds captured never get to taste the freedom they once enjoyed. –But those that do may be better off than they were before they were captured.
The most common birds used in merit-making rituals are finches such as munias, weavers and sparrow and on occasion larger birds such as Spotted and Zebra Dove. More recently bulbuls have been showing up in local markets, but these usually end up being sold to private collectors. Of the finches, I have seen Scaly breasted, Chestnut, White rumped and White headed Munia, Red Avadavat, Eurasian Tree Sparrow and Baya Weaver being sold.
What interests me is the fact that many of these birds are not being trapped in the local area (i.e. the southern region), but are being shipped in by trappers operating in the central plains.
A local dealer I visited in Surat last week had ten Red Avadavat selling in his shop along with 12 Scaly Breasted and one White headed Munia, all brought in from Bangkok. He had sold over 200 Red Avadavat in the past three days, making a profit of 20 per bird sold. That’s a fair number of Red Avadavats introduced to the wild in Surat alone.
Just think theoretically: wouldn’t it be interesting if even 20% of the 200 Red Avadavats released began breeding and spreading into other parts of the south? –Perhaps even into neighboring provinces like Phang Nga or Krabi?
The trader in Surat informed me that he does not know of any “nok tamboon” trappers in Surat Thani and no one have come forward with birds for sale, even though he has quite publicly requested for local birds to be trapped to fuel his merit-making trade. After all, it is a lot cheaper and more profitable for him to buy the birds from local traders rather than having to order them from Bangkok and pay for shipping and handling fees, not to mention the risk one takes in buying a shipment of potentially sick birds.
The lack of local trappers is good news for the birds. Without the threat of trappers, these birds have a fighting chance to populate the area and solidify their homes in safer regions of the country, far away from the slaughter which fuels the wild bird trade in Chatuchak Market.
Mind you, finches are not offered protection by law like parrots. Protection of these species may be better had by just relocating them to other provinces which don’t persecute the birds. So while the finch species begin to disappear from Bangkok and the central plains, they may be repopulating the northeast and southern area at the same time.
Doubtless there will come a time when bird trappers will start scouring the land for new fields of commerce, but until then, we just might be seeing a rebirth of many species of finch being introduced into new parts of the country.
It may be interesting to note that the same trend has been happening in the northeast for quite a number of years, to the point that some of these munias have actually begun to populate areas of Khon Kaen and Nong Khai. Small parties of Chestnut Munia and Red Avadavat were seen in Khon Kaen when I was there back in 2006. These birds were not supposed to exist there. –So how else would they have been introduced into the area?
Local bird trappers in the northeast (Khon Kaen in particular) told me that today the birds found in the markets are in fact locally trapped, in smaller numbers, a break from the past times when large numbers were shipped in from Bangkok to be released as merit-making birds. The rise in local trapping was blamed on an increase of jobless farmers and low demand for birds, not to mention the slumping economy which made traders think twice about ordering a oversized shipment of sickly birds from Bangkok, which is over 400 KM away.
I don’t know about you, but I personally would love to see Red Avadavat or White headed Munia in the fields in Phuket. -Who knows? –Perhaps one day we’ll have the villainous bird trappers to thank for this blessing in disguise.
