1 April is International Bird Day, which marks the beginning of their return to northern parts from their wintering sites. On 19 March 1902, various countries agreed to the International Convention for the Protection of Birds Useful to Agriculture came into force, which more than a dozen states signed. It entered into force on 12 December 1905. On 18 October 1950, in Paris, diplomats signed the International Convention for the Protection of Birds, which replaced the previous document.

1 April is also associated with children’s events centred on birds, arranged in 1894 by a teacher from a small American town of Oil City PA, Charles Babcock. Soon Bird Day was widely-held as a national holiday throughout the USA. 

The theme of the holiday is the conservation of bird species diversity and the preservation and increase of their populations. This day marks the first return of migratory birds from their wintering sites. The rooks are the first to come, then, the wild geese, ducks, cranes, and gulls arrive. In April, the thrushes, robins, greenfinches, chaffinches, finches, and buntingsreturn. Traditionally, at this time, in anticipation of the arrival of the birds, people hang birdhouses and build artificial nests. Birders warn that if birds go extinct, it’d cause an environmental catastrophe, with unpredictable effects upon human civilisation. They tell us that such obliteration of fauna would cause irreparable damage to biological diversity.

More and more countries are involved in the annual selection of the “Bird of the Year” . National social and professional organisations concerned with the protection of birds take part in this “election”. Typically, the choice of the award-winning bird is due to different reasons… a bird is popular in this-or-that country, with close-links to a national culture, or it’s a bird species under threat of extinction, to draw attention to its species preservation, or it’s a bird chosen to demonstrate the diversity of bird life. Clearly, the Bird of the Year reflects the success of national response measures to avian protection and successfully promotes the achievements of environmental organisations and the success of their programmes.

 Ornithologists and ecologists select the spotlighted Bird of the Year, and they conduct seminars, publish literature and brochures on this kind of bird, to promote conservation and care of them. 

World Theatre Day was initiated in 1961 by the International Theatre Institute (ITI). It is celebrated annually on the 27th March by ITI Centres and the international theatre community. Various national and international theatre events are organized to mark this occasion. One of the most important of these is the circulation of the World Theatre Day International Message through which at the invitation of ITI, a figure of world stature shares his or her reflections on the theme of Theatre and a Culture of Peace. The first World Theatre Day International Message was written by Jean Cocteau (France) in 1962. It was first in Helsinki, and then in Vienna at the 9th World Congress of the ITI in June 1961 that President Arvi Kivimaa proposed on behalf of the Finnish Centre of the International Theatre Institute that a World Theatre Day be instituted. The proposal, backed by the Scandinavian centres, was carried with acclamation.