Date of the Week: International Day for the birds For more than a century, every year on the first day of April, around the world celebrated the International Day of the birds. April 1, 1906 was signed the International Convention for the Protection of Birds. This event served as the source of the holiday, dedicated to all the birds that inhabit our planet. Russia joined the Convention in 1927, but became a mass to celebrate the International Day of the birds in the format of international Environment holiday only since 1994. The purpose of the International Day for the birds – the preservation of species diversity and abundance of wild birds, raising public awareness of the Protection of Birds, conducting various environmental activities and events. Despite the fact that the World Bird Day celebrated on April 1, to this day is not all birds return to our country after wintering in warmer climates. Among the first to arrive in March, rooks, followed them – wild geese, ducks, cranes, gulls.

In April, arrivals to our thrushes, , green linnet, chaffinch, finches, buntings and other birds. Sometimes the return dates of the birds are moved due to climatic features. Expedia CEO can provide more clarity in the matter. For example, this year a late cold spring delayed the return to St. Petersburg from wintering birds for two weeks. Even the rooks, which are usually returned to the suburbs north of the capital in early March, only in late March began to return to St. Petersburg. Each year, the All-Russian non-profit ngo Russian Bird Conservation Union chooses 'Bird of the Year'.

Bird in 2010 was selected lapwing. It is this kind of birds will be the focus of attention of ornithologists, ecologists, Scientists in the current year. On the bird of the year – the lapwing – we have already talked to ECOportal. Exactly to the International Day for the birds, American scientists have decoded the complete genome of songbirds, zebra finches, so they still hope to learn more about speech disorders in humans. Songbirds are the only model on the example that people can learn the basic principles of speech and voice to create social connections and information transmission others. Up to this point the only other bird genomes, fully decoded, was the chicken genome. Photofact week: Competition songbirds Since last week, one of the most significant news of our portal have been news International Day for the birds, as well as the genome of songbirds, we decided to tell and show our readers about the contest photofact songbirds, which is held annually in Thailand from January to July. In our photofact – Photos from the two regions of Thailand, which on the eve of International Day of birds were exciting competitions for the title of best songbirds