Wildlife SOS ‘rescues’ budgerigars released by Delhiites, says these Australian birds can’t survive here and become crow feed

There is nothing like seeing a delicate, tropical bird flying freely in the blue skies. But sometimes, it’s not that great being a free bird.

On Sunday morning, Odissi dancer Diya Sen found an unlikely guest under her refrigerator: a tiny, dehydrated budgerigar, one of the most common imported pet birds in India. A few days earlier, a house guard in Defence Colony picked up a near-dead budgie. Before that, a lawyer handed over yet another dehydrated budgerigar, which had literally dropped at his feet from the sky, to animal rescue helpline Wildlife SOS.

Bird lovers in the city have been buying exotic birds—like the budgerigar (an Australian small bird, commonly green like the parakeet) and the cockatiel (usually white, with a crest)—to release them back to where they belong: the skies. But, the exotic birds, unfamiliar and unequipped to deal with Indian climates, either drop dead or need to be ‘rescued’ all over again.

It is precisely the exotic (non-native or indigenous) nature of the birds that allows them to be sold legally in India. Indian birds are protected under the Wildlife Protection Act and cannot be sold as pets, but the Act doesn’t cover Australian birds like budgerigars which are part of a flourishing import trade. A budgerigar is so tiny that it can even fit in a child’s palm.

“I found my dogs barking at something and found that it was a tiny budgerigar, which had just flown in and was not moving,” says Diya Sen. “Its leg was injured, and it seemed to have been attacked by crows. It was exhausted and in a state of shock,” she says.

... contd.