Today is: Bird Day

News-Messenger/News Herald
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On May 4, the nation observes Bird Day. This short-eared owls course silently over grasslands. Birds today are often hunted with cameras and celebrated during American Birding Week in May.
On May 4, the nation observes Bird Day. This short-eared owls course silently over grasslands. Birds today are often hunted with cameras and celebrated during American Birding Week in May.

In the late nineteenth century, eggs of game birds were regularly robbed from nests, and birds were killed to be stuffed and so that their feathers could adorn women's hats. The passenger pigeon, which had once blanketed the skies, had largely gone away. In 1894, Charles Amanzo Babcock, superintendent of schools in Oil City, Pennsylvania, established Bird Day, the first bird holiday in the United States.

Babcock, who believed birds faced destruction from feather ornamentation in hats and from collecting eggs and killing birds, wrote to Secretary of Agriculture Julius Morton to create Bird Day and replace barbaric impulses by humans. Morton approved the request.

Source: Checkiday.com

This article originally appeared on Fremont News-Messenger: Today is: Bird Day