Human uses of birds
Cultural universals in all human societies include expressive forms like art, music, dance, ritual, religion, and technologies like tool usage, cooking, shelter, and clothing.
Birds are important economically, providing substantial amounts of food, especially protein, largely but not exclusively from the domestic chicken;[2][3] feathers and down are used for bedding, insulation, and other purposes.
In the developed world, ducks such as mallard, wigeon, shoveler and teal have for centuries been captured by wildfowlers, while pheasants, partridges, grouse, and snipe are among the terrestrial birds that are hunted for sport, generally with guns.
[10] In other parts of the world, traditional subsistence hunting still continues, as in rural Northern Papua, where cassowaries, crowned pigeons, hornbills and megapodes are captured for food.
[12][13][14] Seabird hunting continues at more moderate levels today, for instance with the traditional Māori harvest of sooty shearwater chicks.
Feathers are used to make warm and soft bedding, including eiderdowns from the belly down of the eider duck, and winter clothing as they have high "loft", trapping a large amount of air for their weight.
[27] Today, birds such as the chicken and the Japanese quail are used as model organisms in ornithological and more generally in biological research, for instance in toxicology.
[30] In Polynesia, sega ula lory bird feathers were major trade items, used to decorate high quality mats in Samoa and Tonga.
[36] During the 19th and early 20th centuries, Plume hunting for feathers used in hats decimated bird populations, especially in the American South where egrets and spoonbills were common targets.
Efforts to stop the decline in bird populations caused by these practices by early conservation groups led to the creation of the first National Wildlife Refuge, Pelican Island.
[38] Late twentieth century designers such as Yves Saint Laurent and Alexander McQueen used feathers to make fashion statements.
[46][47] Millions of people around the world, amounting to nearly half of all households in some developed countries, put out birdfeeders to attract birds to their gardens or windowsills, at a cost of billions of dollars each year.
[57][58] These last had an important effect on evolutionary biology, as Charles Darwin took an especial interest in pigeon fancying, adopted the hobby himself, and made use of the wide variation between breeds as an argument for the power of selection in his 1859 Origin of Species.
[59] They argue that people feel the simple companionship of birds, are inspired by them to create art, let them mark the seasons and provide a sense of place, and use them "as symbols of joy and love".
[59] Around the same time as Grey was writing, the first conservation organisations were coming into being, starting in Britain, triggered by the rapid disappearance of familiar species as they were captured for their feathers or for food.
"[64] The forensic ornithologist Carla Dove noted that birds are biological indicators of habitat health, climate change, and the coming of spring.
[66] Hoopoes were considered sacred in Ancient Egypt and symbols of virtue in Persia, but were thought of as thieves across much of Europe, and harbingers of war in Scandinavia.
[77] In the Etruscan and Roman religions of ancient Italy, priests were involved in augury, interpreting the words of birds while the "auspex" watched their activities to foretell events.
[78] In the Inca and Tiwanaku empires of South America, birds are depicted transgressing the boundaries between the earthly and underground spiritual realms.
[80][81] Among the Parsees of India and Iran, and among practitioners of Vajrayana Buddhism who believe in the transmigration of souls in Sikkim, Mongolia, Bhutan and Nepal, sky burial has been practiced for centuries.
[97] Birds have been depicted throughout the arts from the earliest times to the present,[98] including in painting and sculpture, in literature, in music, in theatre, in traditional dance and ballet, and in film.
Print artists like Utamaro and Hokusai made use of Western and Chinese influences to give a sophisticated effect, while Hiroshige reworked the traditional bird-and-flower genre.
[100] In modern art, some of the paintings of Joan Miró include "A tangle of lines and small, colored ideograms suggesting birds, allegorical characters, stars, and animals".
[108] In English romantic poetry, John Keats's 1819 "Ode to a Nightingale" and Percy Bysshe Shelley's 1820 "To a Skylark" are popular classics.
[117] More recently, birds have appeared in books illustrated by some exceptional artists, producing images that were accurate and beautiful, and that made use of the latest available printing techniques.
[128][129][130] At least two groups of scientists, namely Luis Felipe Baptista and Robin A. Keister in 2005, and Adam Tierney and colleagues in 2011, have argued that birdsong has a similar structure to music.
Loosely based on Daphne du Maurier's 1952 story of the same name, it tells the tale of sudden attacks on people by violent flocks of birds.
[140] Birds feature also in the mass media with iconic animated cartoon characters such as Walt Disney's Donald Duck,[141] Warner Bros.'s Tweety Pie,[142] and Walter Lantz's Woody Woodpecker.
[153][154] Effects are not all negative; for example, wind farms produce renewable energy, helping to mitigate the greatest threat to birds, climate change.
Such projects have produced some successes; one study estimated that conservation efforts saved 16 species of bird that would otherwise have gone extinct between 1994 and 2004, including the California condor and Norfolk parakeet.
