When I first started Birdtober this year, I'd never even heard of the Javan Green Magpie, but within moments of beginning to research for my poem, I learned that there may be only about 50 of them left in the wild. So no sooner did I learn that they exist than I had to mourn that they are almost gone. Because of their dramatic appearance, they are popular as caged birds, so they have been captured into near-extinction. Some people think they may already be extinct in the wild. eBird doesn't even have a photo.
Then I discovered that Chester Zoo, in England, is part of a program working on breeding them with a goal of returning them to the wild. Watch the video below for more details!
Once their romances
played out in tea gardens in Java,
but now their privacy is over
as zookeepers try to encourage them to mate.
Bright green feathers and orange bills
in an enclosure in Chester,
and then a squirming, naked baby bird.
©Ruth Bowen Hersey
If you're as interested as I am, watch this video from Chester Zoo! I've seen several of the birds in this video in the wild, which makes me feel extremely privileged. While in a sense these birds are in captivity just as much as the ones kept in cages in people's homes, at least they are in habitats with lots of room and they are cared for by experts. And let's hope some day they can all be plentiful in the wild again.
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