Cubans and the tradition of bringing birds to singing competitions

Tradition with a history of more than 500 years

On Sunday morning, the men reappeared, carrying caged champions—grey-crested bulbuls that had won singing contests. They gathered in a deserted spot in Havana, past tall weeds and piles of trash blocking the narrow walkways. It was September, the season for bird migration in Cuba.

There has been a recent boom in the demand for birds and bird racing in this country. The peacock-bill, the blue-ringed tit, the red-breasted magpie and the songs they sing are all highly sought after. Sundays are the time for the bird singing competitions.

According to biologist Giraldo Alayón García - former President of the Cuban Zoological Society, the hobby of "playing with birds" dates back to the time when the Spanish ruled Cuba after Columbus discovered Havana Bay (La Habana), which is more than 500 years old. Many Cubans like to keep colorful birds in their homes to enjoy their songs and beauty. That hobby has become more and more popular and is passed down from generation to generation.

Nowadays, the nature of bird watching in Cuba has changed. People trap birds and compete for many reasons, not just simply for the love of it as before.

For some Cubans, selling songbirds is a way of life. Food shortages and the economic impact of the U.S. embargo have made cash scarce, and illegally trapping wild birds is much cheaper and easier than raising birds at home.

“The money to be made from the songbird trade is quite limited,” said Lillian Guerra, professor of Cuban and Caribbean history at the University of Florida. “On Facebook, there are birds for sale for no more than $20. But betting on songbird competitions is the opposite – the stakes are in the thousands of dollars per bet.”

There are Cubans who mourn the deaths of their birds. But often when training birds for competitions, the birds are subjected to stressful and exhausting training, for example by being forced to memorize songs that are played over and over again. Young bird competitors have even injected their birds with steroids to “energize their performance”; or burned their eyes with hot spoons, in the hope that if they can’t see their opponents, they will continue singing endlessly.

From cultural traditions to illegal behavior

The growing demand for bird singing competitions has led to a spate of illegal trapping and trafficking of wild birds. Keeping wild birds is a long-standing tradition in Cuba, but ironically, it is also illegal.

In 2011, Cuba enacted a biodiversity conservation law that banned the keeping of many songbird species in captivity for anything other than scientific research. It also banned holding competitions involving betting on which bird could sing the longest, most melodious tune.

But pandemic lockdowns have fueled the illegal online commercialization of wild birds, says Xochitl Ayón Güemes, an ornithologist and curator at Cuba’s National Museum of Natural History. People still openly post photos and videos from these competitions; and Facebook posts are still rife with birds for sale, even wild-caught birds are clearly labeled.

According to studies, flocks of birds that migrate long distances to their wintering grounds in Cuba are 20% less likely to return than flocks that migrate short distances. Long flights are partly to blame, but trapping also affects the odds.

Alayón, a 75-year-old man, lamented: "Today, in some places you can't even find a grassquit, although when I was a child there were a lot of them in Cuba."

“People want to be close to nature, and songbird trapping is so common in Cuban culture,” says Alayón. “The most difficult thing is to change people’s mindset.”

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