Although catching them is illegal in the United States, it’s a common activity in Cuba and other Latin American countries. The March 11 incident represents one of 10 to 20 cases brought every year as state and federal wildlife agencies attack the black market in buntings, whose capture in the eastern United States takes place largely in Broward, Miami-Dade and Palm Beach counties, according to the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission.
Cited for violating the federal migratory bird act, they were sent on their way, minus the cages and the birds, which were set free (except for one that had been banded for tracking).
The men, spotted on a wooded stretch of Pembroke Road, were caught with cage traps containing six indigo and painted buntings, brilliantly colored birds sold at roadside stands, flea markets and on the internet. At the western edge of Pembroke Pines, where suburban housing gives way to the Everglades, state wildlife officers encountered two men engaged in the shadowy business of trapping songbirds.
