20 January 2017

Walk the Bird

“..a bird from the hand of a fowler”

I noticed men walking around with little square boxes.  I thought it strange because they looked like manly men with square purses.  Then I saw a man carrying a bird cage with a little bird in it, and realized these men were actually walking their birds.  They sometimes take the birds on a bike ride, or put the cages on posts in front of their homes.  They poke a certain kind of grass through the bars of the cage so the birds can peck at the seeds for a tasty bird’s breakfast.  

Racer

Even stranger still, when I asked a man about the birds he told me they are for  “bird races.” Two cages are put side by side on a pole and the birds start singing or not.  Whichever bird outlasts the other, wins.  So I decided to find out more about this custom and did an internet search and discovered what is billed a race, is actually more of a marathon for the bird that lasts the longest in the tweeting competition.  Bets are cast, and thousands of dollars can be won if your bird outlasts the others.  

There are actually hunters that go into the Amazon and trap these birds and sell them for a lot of money.  Some go hunt them for themselves.  They are chipper chirpers, but not songbirds.
They are called towa towa’s.  You can listen to an mp3 online if you look it up. There is a really good tweeter somewhere in the trees near my house that sings a long time.  It’s probably singing the most because its cage is the sky.