Understanding Aviculture
Alex Levitskiy
The newspaper advisors recently suggested to write about what is going on in the lives of the student writers. I am going to take this opportunity to write about one of my passions: birds. I raise all sorts of species of birds in my backyard. While I do have birds for personal enjoyment, I have a greater purpose in that I’m conserving various bird species from extinction. This is referred to as aviculture, which is defined as the raising and care of birds, especially of wild birds, in captivity. The reason why I am able to acquire the species available to me is due to the endless efforts of previous aviculturists that maintained the captive populations of rare and endangered birds. With very few people of the younger generations interested in this hobby, the task of conserving a growing number of endangered species gets increasingly harder. However, there has been vast amounts of hybridization, posing another difficulty. My goal is to maintain a pure stock which will contribute to a limited gene pool of some species. Of course, aviculture is not for everyone. But each week I plan on doing a species spotlight that will present a species to increase the school’s awareness of some of the birds I raise as well as more rare birds in other private collections. Some may choose to keep a backyard flock of the domestic birds like chickens, descendants of junglefowl. Perhaps these articles will spark the interest in someone who will pursue the path of raising ornamental birds that may face extinction in either the near or far future.
All pictures accompanying these articles will be of birds in my private collection, unless otherwise noted.
Lady Amherst Pheasant male
Bronze Spalding split Blackshoulder Peahen
Smew Duck male
(Photos taken by Alex Levitskiy)
