International Bird Day4 photos

Today, the whole planet celebrates International Bird Day. It originated in the United States in 1894. Soon after, thanks to the media, the festival became popular and began to be widely observed in all states, before spreading to Europe.

The history of Bird Day in Russia is equally interesting. When this idea of protecting birds reached our country in the 19th century, it found fertile ground. Even at that time, imperial Russia had already established organizations for bird conservation, and by the beginning of the 20th century, dozens of such groups were active. These included the Ornithological Committee of the Russian Society for Acclimatization of Animals and Plants, the Permanent Nature Conservation Commission of the Russian Geographical Society, and the Russian Society for Animal Protection, founded in 1865.

In cities, children’s organizations called May Societies were established to study and protect birds. These groups were based in schools and brought together nine- to eleven-year-old children who wore emblems of flying swallows on their uniforms. In 1910, schoolteacher Petr Buzuk founded the first Nature Protection Society in Russia in the village of Khortica; its symbol was a bird’s nest. Members of this society fed birds and built nesting boxes for them.

After the Revolution of 1917, the May Societies ceased to exist, but the idea of bird conservation was taken up by youth organizations. In the summer of 1924, the first and only All-Union Congress of Youth Organizations was held in the Soviet Union, where teacher Nikolai Dergunov proposed reinstating Bird Day.

Starting in 1926, Bird Day became an official holiday in the Soviet Union. In 1927, it was celebrated throughout Moscow, with about 5,000 children participating; by 1928, the number of participants had grown to 65,000, and they built over 15,000 nesting boxes.

The annual celebration of Bird Day was interrupted by war, but it was revived in 1948. By 1953, 5 million schoolchildren were involved in the event. However, in the 1960s and 1970s, the celebration once again faded away.

The festival was revived in 1999 thanks to the Russian Bird Protection Union, established in 1993. In its first year alone, 500 people in Moscow participated in building nesting boxes for birds. In 2000, the Moscow government joined in, making Bird Day a city-wide event.

The date of celebration is not chosen by chance: it coincides with the time when birds return from warmer regions. On this day, adults and children improve habitats for waterfowl and install new feeders and nesting boxes.

It’s worth noting that in the second weekend of May, another well-known bird-related festival is celebrated: World Migratory Bird Day.