We held a bird rhyme contest in September 2019 asking people to indulge in writing short, witty poems on five common birds – Indian Roller, Paradise Flycatcher, Pied Cuckoo, Purple Heron, and Purple Sunbird. The response to the contest was overwhelming! The participants let their creative juices flow describing the dazzling colours, fancy plumes and flashy moves of the birds. We received a total of 117 entries of which 46 contributions were for Purple Sunbird, 24 for Pied Cuckoo, 13 for Paradise Flycatcher, 19 Indian Roller and 15 contributions for Purple Heron.

We had fun going through all the entries but it was quite an uphill task for team Early Bird to shortlist the top 5 Bird rhymes for each species. In order to choose the best rhymes, we requested people to vote through an online system. 152 people voted, based on which the winning rhymes were selected to be printed on the bookmarks! Hearty Congratulations to Madhavi Raj, Rahul Narlanka and Suchi Govindarajan for the winning entries which were then featured on the Early Bird bookmarks. For all the shortlisted entries and some notable poems we received in languages other than English, check out this blog post. 

The Early Bird bookmarks with beautifully illustrated birds by artist Smita Kaushik and poetry by the winners of the bird rhyme contest were then printed, and are now sent complimentary with every order of Early bird printed materials from our online store!