I guess released/escaped birds can wander anywhere.
There is,seemingly, a continuing problem with so-called mercy releases of captive wildlife by Buddhists. Bride's Pool has been known for such releases in the past and there was an item today on the news about hundreds of locusts being found on the shores of Plover Cove reservoir - again, apparently, a result of a mercy release by those seeking good karma.
Such practices are not confined to Asia as a fairly recent article in The Guardian indicates. See
https://www.theguardian.com/worl ... -cruel-wild-animals
To quote two paragraphs from the article:
"According to Humane Society International (HSI), hundreds of millions of birds, fish, monkeys, turtles and other animals are involved in acts of fangsheng every year. But these days, it says, “mercy release has become an industry built on the capture and supply of wild animals, for whom there are devastating consequences of injury, illness or death”. In Taiwan alone, 200 million wild animals are used every year in release rituals, according to HSI in 2012. Fangsheng is also practiced in China, Hong Kong, Singapore, Nepal, the United States and the UK.
The organisation says many animals are fatally injured in the ritual, and those that survive release often die soon afterwards from exhaustion, injury or disease, or else become prey to other species. Some are re-captured after the ritual and re-sold. Release can also cause environmental harm, it adds. Animals “may be released outside their natural habitats and in groups large enough to establish breeding populations, often wreaking havoc on local ecosystems. Some are invasive species that may threaten the survival of the native species.”
A succinct summing up of the contradictions involved in these mercy releases.
David
