Walking about all over the place, I am often amazed at the volume of song very small birds come out with. Larger birds like rooks and crows just seem to squawk. Pheasants and peacocks (there a few of the latter in a garden up the road from here, goodness knows why) have a horrible mournful cry. Magpies always sound quarrelsome. Blackbirds sing rather nicely though. But some of the loudest and most tuneful song I’ve heard came from a tiny little wren. At least I think it was a wren. It was high up in the tree and very difficult to spot.
I am wittering on about birdsong because I came across an article about a man described as a ‘finch-smuggling kingpin’ who has been sentenced to a year and a day in prison for trafficking small birds into the USA. It’s all to do with songbird competitions which apparently have been a pastime in the Caribbean for centuries. And now presumably also in the USA. Aficionados judge the animals on such factors as how many times they chirp or sing. And aficionados will pay thousands of dollars for them. Who knew?
Because the birds are brought in illegally, and cruelly, stuffed into hair curlers, for example, to hide them from customs officials, there is no control over any bird-related diseases they might bring with them. The authorities want to clamp down on it. Understandably!
It’s not the first time this chap has been caught smugglings birds in. He has already been fined §7,800! His lawyer says, “His actions were not just about money,” adding that the birds “are a part of him and a part of his culture”. It goes back, the lawyer claims, to his childhood in Guyana, where he learnt to love finches. His love of the birds has “given him solace through many personal difficulties”.
He loves them so much he is prepared to let large numbers of them die as they are smuggled through customs checks in suitcases! But now his lawyer claims he is remorseful. “I’m going to stay away from the birds,” he pledged in a video he submitted to the court, “because it’s trouble.” That sounds to me less like remorse than wanting to avoid trouble.
Prosecutors argued that he deserved “significant” prison time, calling him “one of New York’s finch-smuggling kingpins”. (There are more of them!?!) So he has been sentenced to a year and a day in prison, which sounds either medieval or something from a nursery rhyme. Think of the Owl and Pussycat who “sailed away for a year and a day”. It sounds like of those old expressions for “a long time”, like the biblical forty days and forty nights.
Meanwhile in this country an environmental activist, an Insulate Britain activist to be precise, has been jailed for eight weeks (maybe not as “significant” as a hear and a day! But still a prison sentence!) after disobeying a judge’s instruction not to mention the climate crisis as his motivation during his trial for taking part in a road-blocking protest. David Nixon, 36, a care worker from Barnsley, was sentenced at Inner London crown court on Tuesday after admitting contempt of court the day before by using his closing address to begin telling a jury about his reasons for protesting.
This provoked at least one letter of protest to the Guardian newspaper:
“It is truly shocking that a person has been tried while being prevented from explaining in court their motivation to the jury. By what definition is this justice? There are possible defences in law to the charge of causing public nuisance in these circumstances, but David Nixon – who had taken part in a road-blocking protest for Insulate Britain – was unrepresented in court.
It is clear to everyone, and should have been clear to the judge, that climate catastrophe will cause considerably more nuisance to all those in the court, and outside the court, than the actions of a climate activist. Nixon was acting on my behalf; we all need to be protected from a myopic government that is hellbent on growth at any cost.
Dennis Leachman
Kingston upon Thames, London”
Quite so!
Life goes on. Stay safe and well, everyone!
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