Inside the Indonesian Songbird Trade

Demand is booming for caged songbirds on the island of Java, and forests are falling silent. But conservation solutions are not easy, because bird-keeping is a proud cultural expression after colonialism and Covid.

From the Autumn 2024 issue of Living Bird magazine. Subscribe now.

The two bird-keepers wrestled each other to the ground, exchanging blows while a chorus of bird song filled the grounds at Stadium Sultan Agung, a 35,000-seat soccer stadium on the Indonesian island of Java.

Military police descended quickly on the scene, separating the men and haul­ing them away as hundreds of White-rumped Shamas chirped, whistled, and fluttered in the rafters. This was the Piala Raja (King’s Cup), one of the most prestigious bird-singing contests in Indonesia, and such behavior would not be tolerated.

Each bird sang from an ornate cage hung delicately alongside its counterparts as throngs of fans clad in monogrammed hats and T-shirts—some even waving team flags—cheered from the sidelines. Amidst the chaos, human judges patrolled the arena, listening intently. With the occasional frantic scribble on a clipboard, each judge was rating the birds based on their songs, plumage, and movement. After a few minutes an announcer’s voice burst through the PA, and more bird-keepers flooded in from the sidelines to swap out birds for the next round. Thirty-two rounds later, after 14 hours of compe­tition, champions were crowned, and their owners went home with thousands of dollars in prizes.

Keeping caged songbirds is a cen­turies-old tradition in Indonesia with deep cultural roots and significance, especially among the Javanese people. Since the 1970s, bird-singing contests have become increasingly popular, driv­ing a boom in bird-keeping. Researchers estimate 70 million birds are being kept across 12 million homes in Java alone. Most of these birds come from the wild. According to the International Union for Conservation of Nature, at least 43 songbird species are at increased risk of extinction from trade pressures across Southeast Asia.

Already faced with threats from habitat loss and climate change, birds like the White-rumped Shama (known locally as Murai Batu) are disappearing from much of their native ranges, leav­ing behind silence in Indonesian forests that were once filled with symphonies of life. Researchers and media organi­zations have dubbed this phenomenon the “Asian Songbird Trade Crisis.” Many cast the agents of the songbird trade as villains in a tragedy of natural history, but that’s not how people involved with the bird-singing contests see it.

“Our work centers on love,” says Samsul Hadi, a contest judge and public relations representative for one of the Piala Raja’s sponsors. Samsul works for a national bird-breeding organization called Pelestari Burung Indonesia (Indo­nesian Bird Conservation, or PBI). “We’re taking care of these birds, bringing them food every day when their food supplies might be depleted in the wild. It’s the only way they can sing like champions.”

In Indonesia, not all definitions of conservation are the same.

“A lot of bird-keepers think it’s better for us to catch birds so they can be ‘safe,’” says Asman Purwanto, a lifelong birder and executive director of the conser­vation organization BISA Indonesia. “But then the birds cannot provide any benefits to the environment. They cannot breed, reproduce, or contribute to the ecosystem. This is still something the public needs to learn.”

“We All Love Birds, But We Have Different Ways of Showing It”

In the Special Region of Yogyakarta, a territory on Java’s southern coast, the easiest place to hear a bird song is not in the trees, but in a cage. Many of Yogyakarta’s residents are Javanese, Indonesia’s largest and most powerful ethnic group—for them, caged birds are largely seen as tokens of status and prestige.

In his famous novel This Earth of Mankind, Pramoedya Ananta Toer chronicles how owning a bird is part of being a Javanese man. There are five ingredients, he writes: a wife, a car, a house, a talisman like a ring or a ceremonial dagger called a kris, and a bird (traditionally a Zebra Dove, locally known as Perkutut or Ukilo). The bird shows a man is in touch with his sensi­tive side, and can afford to indulge in leisure as well as work.

“We all love birds, but we have differ­ent ways of showing it,” says Pramana Yuda, an ornithologist and professor at Atma Jaya University in Yogyakarta. “I used to think bird-keepers expressed this passion by keeping birds, but it’s really a possessive kind of love central in Javanese culture. My love for birds is my own.”

Bird-keeping produces enclaves of specialists who dedicate themselves to birds like the White-rumped Shama, Oriental Magpie-Robin (locally called Kacer), and Orange-headed Thrush (Anis Merah). When breeders, trainers, poachers, and competitors tie their fates to a single species, they build small communities and skillsets that span generations.

“We’re not people who exploit birds on a large scale. We have a community that can help ensure they don’t go extinct,” explains Samsul, the PR rep­resentative for the PBI bird-breeding organization. “This passion has been passed down. I’ve been keeping song­birds ever since I moved to Yogyakarta 40 years ago. Now the whole family supports our passion, all the way down to my grandchildren.”

Bird-keeping may have first arrived in Indonesia from China, brought mainly to its port cities through trade and immigration in the hands of wealthy merchants and politicians. Already imbued with status and pres­tige, caged birds became staples of the Javanese royal courts to symbolize their cultural refinement, spirituality, and even artistic expression. Today one of bird-keeping’s most outspoken advo­cates is Gusti Bendara Pangeran Haryo Prabukusumo—typically addressed as Gusti Prabu, a member of Yogyakarta’s royal family and brother to the Sultan and Governor of Yogyakarta. As Indonesia’s only remaining royal city, Yogyakarta is a cultural beacon in Java­nese society, and its royals are one of the most famous families in all of Java.

“In Java we have always kept birds, ever since the age of the kings,” says Gusti Prabu, whose mansion is filled with hundreds of Zebra Doves. Among the doves are other species like critically endangered Javan Green-Magpies (Ekek Geling) and Black-collared Starlings (Jalak Mandarin) from mainland South­east Asia. It takes connections to obtain birds from overseas.

“Birds are living things as well as commodities, but their commercial value is especially important,” he contin­ues. “When you breed them, you create jobs. There are people selling vitamins, herbs, food, medicine, feed, feeders, cages. From cages for livestock, cages for competitions, cages for daily use, and rings to track birds in trade. If it’s a competition, people sell food and drinks around it. It bolsters the economy.”

Bird-keeping went underground during Indonesia’s colonial era, when various European powers—including Great Britain, Portugal, and primarily the Netherlands—exploited economic footholds in the region’s spice trade to gradually assert political dominance over the nation. Under rotating colonial rule, standardized forms of leisure like group calisthenics and team sports such as badminton (currently Indonesia’s national sport) were promoted to Westernize the nation, while bird-keeping was discouraged. A cultural agenda intended to minimize differences between colonizers and the colonized made it easier for outside nations to maintain their access to Indonesia’s resource-rich islands. Such patterns of colonial behavior continued well after Indonesia declared independence in 1945.

Later in the 20th century, however, bird-keeping started to come back. Singing contests with Zebra Doves grew more popular in the 1970s with backing from President Suharto. Other species started entering competitions in the 1990s, changing the bird-singing contests into multispecies events. All the while, Indonesia was becoming an industrial nation, embracing globalist trade policies that dramatically depleted natural resources. Growing demands for timber, oil palm, and agricultural expansion accelerated deforestation, while greater industrial activities increased pollution, and resettlement programs drove millions of people to less populated parts of the country previously insulated from urbanization. These steps toward Indonesia’s devel­opment came with critical implications for biodiversity and little regulation, trading iconic wildlife and wild places for participation in the global economy.

Today experts say many of Java’s forests are mostly depleted of wild birds, so captive-breeding operations are popping up to supply birds for the contests. Warehouses have appeared in Java, annually breeding thousands of songbirds the way factory farms pro­duce eggs and poultry. Yet many traders still believe wild birds are superior for competition, and so poaching has ramped up on other Indonesian islands like Sumatra, Borneo, and the Lesser Sundas to meet ceaseless demand. Despite the grave environmental consequence, modern bird-keeping for many represents a reclamation of Indonesian leisure and economic sov­ereignty, as the country emerges from the lingering shadows of colonialism. Environmental conservation can even be viewed as another colonial device meant to dictate Indonesian livelihoods and lifestyles.

“I told the Ministry of Forestry not to follow the world’s rules,” Gusti Prabu recounts. “People need to see what it’s like in Indonesia. If you leave birds alone in the wild, they just die. In other parts of the world, it can be difficult to keep these animals as pets. But here in Indonesia everything you need is available.” 

Birds that are champion singers, and their progeny, are treated like family among bird-keepers. Rarely left alone, they join their human caretakers on road trips in their cages, strapped into the backseat like children. A champion’s descendants receive birth certificates when they’re born, and names when they win singing contests.

In Indonesia, the care lavished on caged birds is “just like raising a baby,” Gusti Prabu laughs. “I never bathe my wife, but I always bathe my birds!”

Trillions of Rupiah

Bird-keeping in Indonesia isn’t just tradition. Today it’s big business. The administration of current Indonesian president Joko Widodo estimates that the caged-bird sector and all that it entails is worth trillions of rupiah (or billions of U.S. dollars). For many, keeping birds is a ticket to a better life.

“Selling birds helped me put both of my children through college,” admits Sariyanti, a veteran saleswoman who goes by Yanti for short. She is a special­ist in lovebirds who works at a wildlife market in southern Yogyakarta City that’s famous for selling songbirds as well as other animals, from owls to fish to civets to monkeys.

“I tried and failed at many different careers,” Yanti says, “but when I started selling birds something seemed to click.”

In times of trouble, consumer demand kept her business afloat.

“During the first wave of the [Covid-19] pandemic, it was great,” Yanti recalls. “Everyone was buying because people had money and didn’t have much to do other than stay home and look for hobbies.”

Champion songbirds can be worth over $20,000 on resale if they win high-profile contests. Others find ways to profit from their birds without parting ways. During the pandemic, bird-keeper Bayu Saputra held onto his decorated White-rumped Shamas even when he was desperate to make ends meet. Too attached to sell, he opened a bird school where clients pay tuition for Bayu and his shamas to teach their birds how to sing like champions. The fee costs as much as a private ele­mentary school.

“The Javanese have a saying, ‘eman’ [meaning to have faith],” Bayu explains, brandishing plaques inscribed with the names of successful graduates from his wall of fame. “I founded my bird school with [my White-rumped Shama] and one by one my clients came in.”

Rags-to-riches stories happen in the bird trade, but the industry also holds a mirror to broader economic trends. Indonesia has a growing middle class eager to show off newfound wealth with the purchase of birds. The overall economic growth has primarily bene­fited the country’s richest 20%, how­ever—leaving the remaining 205 million people behind. Burgeoning sales and contest prizes offer some tradespeople a chance at the big time. But stability can be rare.

“It’s harder to make a living now than it was before,” Yanti complains. “When I started 12 years ago there wasn’t much competition, but now vendors will sell birds for very little profit.”

While publishing findings about the value of the songbird trade, Widodo’s administration publicly supported its continued growth and hosted singing contests. Like Suharto before him, Widodo’s presidential endorsement has enhanced bird-keeping’s prestige, drawing more people in. The economics of bird-keeping is even shaping how birds are reintroduced to the wild. Taman Safari Prigen Conservation Breeding Ark, a breeding facility focused on wildlife conservation, recently made headlines for restoring a wild breeding population of Javan Pied Starlings (Jalak Suren) in East Java. This once-numerous species had not been seen in the wild for over 20 years, but millions still survived in cages. The Ark’s curator, Jochen Menner, says that for the reintroduction effort he had to buy every single bird at market.

“Most commercial breeders really understand what we are doing, and they are willing to help to a degree,” Menner says, “but not to the extent that they would collaborate or donate the birds.… You have to convince them with the right amount of money.”

Reintroduction strategies can help restore wild populations, but commer­cial breeders still have ideas of con­servation that protect a tradition and a livelihood that keeps birds in captivity.

“Most bird-keepers in Indonesia today only care about making money from competitions, they don’t think about sustainability,” laments Samsul of the PBI bird-breeding organization. “We’re really saddened when we see wild birds being captured en masse … future generations should be able to enjoy birds not just by seeing them in pictures or videos, but by knowing their physical presence.”

“We must ensure that their habitat continues to exist, and if we can’t protect the habitat we can still breed them,” he continues. “We don’t want our hobby to stop just because of a lack of bird stock.”

The Forest Has Become Very Quiet

Candra (name changed to protect his identity) pulls the Arctic Warbler out of his glue trap, and the branch flies back with a snap. It had only taken a few minutes to catch the bird, with a simple recording of bird distress calls projected through a Blue­tooth speaker. It is clear he had done this before.

“We’ve been hunting birds since we were kids, and sometimes we would catch dozens of birds every day. But now we’ve mostly stopped so the birds can recover,” Candra explains. “The forest has already become very quiet.”

On this day, Candra is reenacting his hunting practice as part of a research project on Yogyakarta’s songbird trade, and the warbler is quickly released.

People like Candra supply birds not only to markets and private collectors, but also to small-scale commercial breeders looking to start their own captive song­bird colonies. Working around the clock, these mom-and-pop operations spend nearly every day feeding baby birds, cleaning cages, and pairing birds up to breed. These operations in turn fuel the kinds of singing contests PBI regularly organizes throughout the year.

“We are trying to popularize nonprofit singing contests with only captive-bred birds,” explains Bagiya Rakhmadi, a former national director of PBI. Cash-free contests (other than the entry fee) are part of PBI’s strategy to try and make their practices more sustainable. Each year their members pledge to release 10% of their breeding stock back into the wild, and officials release captive birds ceremonially at their events. Then there are opportuni­ties for sponsorship. At a PBI contest, champions might not win prize money, but they could win a motorcycle.

“If more people embrace this compe­tition model, then captive breeding could become profitable,” Bagiya says. “The proof will be in our competition results.”

But even if more captive birds win contests, breeding birds is still far more expensive than catching them. Valuable prizes can also be sold off for cash. And when captive-bred birds are released, their odds of survival can be slim.

Preserving genetic diversity can also be a challenge with captive-bred birds, when breeders mix up individu­als from different populations. Many commercial breeders cross regional subspecies to produce pleasing blends of physical and behavioral traits in their birds, while genetically pure birds are seen as undesirable. Bird-breeders who release their stock sometimes fail to find suitable release sites, monitor released populations to make sure they survive, or prevent recapture by other poachers. Even breeders in zoos and other conservation organizations that breed birds to maintain the viability of a species often struggle to test how birds are related genetically. Mistakes can easily be made when subspecies look alike and get mixed together.

“These caged birds are not natural,” explains professor Yuda, the ornithol­ogist from Atma Jaya University. In nature, songbirds learn how to sing early in life from their adult parents and neigh­bors, giving wild populations regional dialects reminiscent of local culture. But Yuda says that “poor conditions in captivity negatively impact these birds in ways invisible to most bird-keepers. The birds become inbred, lose their wild songs, are more vulnerable to disease, and suffer decreased fitness so they can’t survive in the wild anymore.”

Claims of captive breeding can also be used as a cover for poaching.

“Sometimes breeding is a way of laundering wild birds,” says Asman Purwanto from BISA Indonesia. “They catch them in nature and then give them a ring,” or leg band, as if they were born in captivity.

As wild bird populations dwindle and even become extirpated on Java, smuggling networks are emerging to feed demand by bringing in birds from other islands in Indonesia like Sulawesi, Borneo, Sumatra, and West Papua, as well as other nations including Vietnam, China, and Thailand. For at least 30 years, Indonesia has been at the center of an insatiable and vast bird-trade network involving dozens of countries around the world.

“Birds destined for Java are often stuffed into thermoses. [The smugglers] would break the inner glass and leave just the outer casing, then they’d fill it up,” says Asman of BISA. “In the end, many birds die.”

New conservation groups have emerged in recent years to break up these smuggling operations. Government agencies also patrol markets and try to ban species from trade, but such efforts often meet resistance. When the Indo­nesian government took steps to protect White-rumped Shamas in 2018, outraged bird-keepers protested for weeks until the government reversed its decision.

Some local bans have shown promise in stopping the depopulation of birds from Javanese forests, however. The vil­lage of Jatimulyo in Yogyakarta’s Kulon Progo regency completely banned bird hunting a decade ago as part of a strategy for ecotourism development. The key, locals say, was consulting villages first and including them in the decision to implement the ban.

“Passing Regulation Number 8 of 2014 was a turning point for our com­munity,” recalls Kelik Suparno, a skillful bird hunter who has since become a full­-time nature guide. “Academics and other guests to our village helped us under­stand the connection between hunting and extinction, and I started telling my community not to do it so the birds can recover. Eventually it became law, and I became a conservationist by accident.”

Jatimulyo has become an example of community-led conservation in Indonesia. Residents patrol the forest. The village has made investments in ecotourism, nest adoption and moni­toring programs with government and corporate sponsors, and agroforestry operations that feed birds and humans alike. After 10 years local bird surveys show this once silent forest is now a haven for over 100 native species that supports the community’s livelihoods and reconnects the village to its envi­ronmental past.

“People here used to keep birds as a way to fill their worlds, but thanks to ecotourism they have become more conscious about conservation,” says Kelik. “We must educate people about the ecological and economic benefits of wild birds.”

Another strategy could be regulating the take of birds from the forests to reduce the impact to wild populations.

“Rotational chick harvests are one kind of compromise we explore with bird hunters,” explains Yuda, the ornithology professor. “In the case of Orange-headed Thrush, for example, if they encounter a nest with two chicks, they might only take one and leave the other.”

“There’s some evidence that we can do this sustainably for certain species,” he says. “But the whole ecosystem is a different story.”

Bird-Keepers and Birdwatchers Come Together

“This is probably my favorite place to look for forest birds,” says As­man Purwanto of the conservation group BISA Indonesia, as he hoists his camera and tripod over his shoulder and starts walking along the forested hillside. An expert on raptors, he has come to the village of Jatimulyo to photograph a resident honey-buzzard working its way into a newly discovered beehive. When Asman reaches the hive, he sets up his camera and waits. Through the trees, wild bird songs echo like gifts on the wind.

“I try to come here once a month when work [for BISA Indonesia] allows,” he says.

While an epicenter of the bird-keeping world, Yogyakarta is also home to the largest population of bird­watchers in Indonesia. Asman is one of them, and his organization welcomes people into the birding community.

“We have an open-door policy, anyone is welcome!” Asman says of his office. During the pandemic, he says “it was like the Dutch colonial period. People didn’t even have salaries, but we still provided lunch and dinner to any­one who visited, and people sometimes brought food to us in return. It’s about togetherness.”

Community conservation is gaining traction in Indonesia. Other villages in Java are starting to follow Jatimulyo’s example. Residents have recently expanded their businesses to include bee-keeping, bird-friendly coffee, and nature photography tours and nest adoption programs. But here and else­where village incomes are still catching up, and community participation is a consistent challenge.

“Conservation can and should be an activity that benefits our communities,” Asman says, “but it’s a long process. The benefits of ecotourism can take two or three years to appear, especially in places where people support themselves hunting birds.”

Indonesia’s caged-bird trade shows little sign of slowing down. Today there are more species of songbirds in global trade than any other group of birds, and songbirds still receive fewer protections from international trade authorities like CITES than other groups, such as parrots and raptors. But ecotourism is also a booming industry, with songbirds potentially at its center. As both the bird-keeping and birdwatching sectors grow, the nation faces a choice about how to power its future

“The challenge is to change the mindset of people,” Asman says. “If we prioritize growth without protecting the environment, we will lose our balance.… Songbirds aren’t just parts of the food chain, they help with insect control, plant pollination, and seed dispersal.… Breeding birds for release is great, but it should be a last resort. There is lots of wildlife still worth saving.”

“We have to look at it from an eco­system perspective,” he says. “The gov­ernment can’t just turn a blind eye and focus on economic growth. Even with pressure from international [economic] agreements, there must be something stating how we must save the environ­ment. That’s part of development of the country and its people.”

Asman photographs a honey-buz­zard as it lands just above the beehive, searching for an entry point in the swarm. Then it is time to go home. He hikes back into Jatimulyo village, passing a cluster of cages full of birds— bulbuls and lovebirds—hanging outside some homes. This is a no-hunting zone, so these birds could only have come from other villages. The birds sing while children play in a nearby stream.

“My son also enjoys birdwatching. It helps our whole family clear our heads, and he especially loves shorebirds because he gets to play in the sand and mud,” Asman says. “My dream is for him to become a birdwatcher like me.”

Just up the road, Candra, the former bird hunter, says he too has a dream, as he takes a pull from his cigarette: “I hope the birds come back so I can hunt them again.”