National Bird Day (United States)

National Bird Day is on January 5 each year, as it’s scheduled to coincide with the end of the annual Christmas Bird Count. The Christmas Bird Count has been going on for more than a decade. It lasts three weeks and is the longest running citizen science survey in the world that helps to monitor the health of our nation’s birds. Birders and the public go out and count as many birds as they can see during the count.

The reason National Bird Day falls on January 5 is that, for three weeks, the country is focused on native birds and wild populations. Once that period ends, we begin to focus on captive birds (who mainly consist of bird species that are native to other countries, but who are kept in captivity in the U.S.). January 5 is the new beginning for captive birds!

National Bird Day is an annual holiday with half a million adherents who celebrate through birdwatching, studying birds, smoking birds, bird drinking games including ’bird date’ and other bird-gang activities. Bird adoption is a particularly important National Bird Day activity. According to the newspaper Atlanta Journal-Constitution, many bird enthusiasts celebrate by adopting birds and by educating future bird owners about the special issues involved with taking care of birds, including their "screaming, biting, constant cleanups, the need for daily interaction and a varied diet".

Surely no child, and few adults, have ever watched a bird in flight without envy.

Isaac Asimov

A bird is an instrument working according to mathematical law, which instrument it is within the capacity of man to reproduce with all its movements, but not with a corresponding degree of strength, though it is deficient only in the power of maintaining equilibrium. We may therefore say that such an instrument constructed by man is lacking in nothing except the life of the bird, and this life must needs be supplied from that of man.

Leonardo da Vinci

A bird maintains itself in the air by imperceptible balancing, when near to the mountains or lofty ocean crags; it does this by means of the curves of the winds which as they strike against these projections, being forced to preserve their first impetus bend their straight course towards the sky with divers revolutions, at the beginning of which the birds come to a stop with their wings open, receiving underneath themselves the continual buffetings of the reflex courses of the winds.

Leonardo da Vinci

Whenever I heard the song of a bird and the answering call of its mate, I could visualize the notes in scale, all built up within my consciousness as a natural symphony.

William Christopher Handy

I think people who don’t believe in God are crazy. How can you say there is no God when you hear the birds singing these beautiful songs you didn’t make?

Little Richard