Those birds are sold by vendors for that specific purpose (releasing them). Buddhists believe doing that brings good karma. It is funny, because vendors catch em and sell em, people release em, vendors catch em again and sell them again, and the cycle goes on.
But mainly it gives satisfaction to the person releasing it and that whats important.
Thanks ,Karl, Mike & Dana.
Karl you know alot of Buddhist tradition.You are right in saying that the vendors will catch again and sell to us,on the other hand the venders are very poor people.I regarded as donation to poor people.They have trained some of the birds to fly away and later come back to them.
