Essay On Importance Of Birds

ECONOMIC IMPORTANCE OF BIRD

Birds have direct and indirect economic and cultural values for people. Birds are important for humans due to many reasons. Birds provide us food, medicine, fertilizers and also bring about pollinations. Birds are a part of the food chain. Birds also perform vital ecological role, besides their economical role. They are critical links within the vast food chains and webs that exist in the ecosystem. The economic importance of birds can be studied into two parts – A) Beneficial effect B) Harmful effect.

People have always hunted birds for food. Many birds (Pigeons, ducks, turkeys, quails and others) are hunted by people for their delicious meat. Many varieties of fowls, turkeys, pigeons, geese and ducks have been raised to produce better qualities of flesh. The flesh of chicken is considered as a delicacy and is in great demand. The birds are reared for their eggs. The eggs are very nutritious and rich in proteins. The eggs are used for making a number of foodstuffs such as deserts, cakes, pastries, biscuits, doughnuts

As biological Controls – *Birds are very helpful in controlling injurious crop pests. *There are a wide variety of insect eating birds. *Sparrow generally eat seeds of noxious weeds. *Birds of prey such as hawks, eagles and owls kill rodents, hare and ground squirrels etc which destroys the crops. *It has been reported that birds can destroy up to 98% of over-wintering codling moth larvae (a major pest of apples worldwide). *No doubt, in the absence of birds, many of these insects may become even greater pests, destroying our agricultural and forestry crops. As predators – Carnivorous birds such as peacocks, eagles and kites, etc feed on several venomous and injurious animals like snakes and scorpion