The Slaughter of Birds.

Te Aroha News, Volume V, Issue 226, 29 October 1887, Page 4

The Slaughter of Birds.

Mr R. Bgwdlkr Sharpe, of the Natural History Department of the British Museum, writes as follows to a London paper respecting the wholesale and ciuel slaughter of birds for the purposes of fashion in the trimming of ladits' hats :—: — The use of feathers for the ornamentation of the person has generally been considered one of the characteristics of savage races, it has remained for the present generation to witness the slaughter of myriads of birds i for the decoration of civilised women. To tho°.e barbarians in petticoats whom one reads of as going to balls in dresses ori namented \\ ith numbers of robins or swallows — harmless insect-eating birds — it is useless to appeal, as the mere fact of their uppearance in such costumes proves them to be devoid of any feeling except that of personal vanity ; but it may not be amh.3 to call the attention of our country-women to the shameful massacre of birds for which they are mainly responsible. It is ignorance of the facts attending this bird murder which induces them still to encoutage a barbarous fashion, and I have, therefore, thought it my duty to bring before the public some recent facts which have been this week published in the Auk, the journal of the American Ornithologists' Union. One of the most familiar decorations in hats and bonnetsof the presentday is a bunch of the feather plumes known as " Osprey." Perhaps the ladies who wear these plumes have fancied that they really came from the osprey or fishing-eagle {Pandloji 2?a.lii<etus). Such is not the case, for the plumage of the genuine osprey is harsh and coarse, and I cou'd not be ueed by plumassiers, even if | the scarcity of the bird did not render it impossible to procure a supply of feathers at I all. The long plumes, misnamed " Osprey " by the dealers, are taken from the egrets I and smaller herons, who wear them for a short time only, duriog the nesting season. These beautiful birds breed generally in companies, or '• rookeries." as they are called and one of the principal nesting-places was Florida. So great, however, has been the demand for " Osprey " plumes by the ladies of Europe and America that these heron rookeries have been all but destroyed by professional gunners. As the long and delicate feathers are only donned during the breeding season, it is at the latter time of year the massacre takes place around the nests, with such results as the following culled out of the pages of the Auk. " From a private letter," writes the Editor, "of an ornithologist, recently in Florida, we select the following suggestive reference to the destruction of herons in Florida : * Plurae-hunters have destroyed about all the Florida "Rookeries." I saw one whole waggonloadof the scapular plumes of Ardea Wardi afc one point. It is a burning shame, and it would make your heart ache to hear the wails of the starving young birds whose parents have been killed. Two years more of the present work, and Ardea Wardi, as well as the largo and small egrets, will be as scarce as Ardea Wuerdtmanni Is now. Cannot something be done \ to stop such wicked slaughter ?' " Let the public reflect for a moment on what a number of birds must have been massacred to fill a waggon with the little tufts of their scapular or shoulder feathers. Mr Scott, the well-known naturalist, also enumerates many instances of the same reckless slaughter. Let one extract suffice from his paper on our " Bird Rookeries of Southern Florida" :— " But one afternoon when Johnson was absent from home hunt- ' ing, one old Frenchman above referred to, A. Lecherallier, came in with a boat, and deliberately killed off the old birds as they were feeding their young, obtaining about one hundred and eighty of them. The young, about three weeks old, to the number of several hundreds at least, and utterly unable to care for themselves, were simply left to starve to death in their nests, or to be eaten by raccoons and buzzards." This extract refers to the brown pelican. If English womenhave hitherto worn these " Osprey " and other, plumes in ignorance of tho bird-murder, caused by "plume hunters," I contend that after reading the above extracts, an} lady who buya •• Osprey" feathers does so with a full knowledge of the starved nestlings which those feathers represent, becomes an abefctor in the slaughter of the parent birds.