Source: The Breeze, pg. 14
By: Frank May
The most recent addition to my antique bird book collection is “Birds that Hunt and are Hunted” by Neltje Blanchan published by Doubleday and McClure Company in 1898. It was gifted to me by Rob and Mary Lou Dalziel and is much appreciated. Mary Lou picked it up in Gertie’s Garrett a year ago, and it has a signature on the facing page of a Lilian Hyde who made some margin notes and added some extra pictures. If anyone has any information on Ms. Hyde or where the book came from, I would be interested to know.
Despite its rather odd organization, the book contains a number of attractive prints and much useful, although dated and somewhat obscure, information. For instance, it includes a number of common or local names for birds that are no longer in use. Some of you who visit Florida in late spring may be familiar with a raptor called the Swallowtailed Kite. Apparently the common name for this striking bird was “Snake Hawk,” so named I assume because it had been observed picking up snakes and dining on the wing. I would think that this could be a very dangerous way to gain a meal, especially in the tropics where many snakes are venomous.
In his introduction, G.O. Shields quotes a study that reports that bird numbers in over thirty states had declined by over 40%, this in 1898. He rails against the plumage trade that increasingly slaughtered birds by the thousands in order to decorate ladies’ hats. Thankfully that all went away with Theodore Roosevelt’s establishment of the National Wildlife Refuge System and the Migratory Bird Act adopted in 1918, which made the practice illegal.
The section that deals with the Wild Turkey is most interesting. I quote the author: “Once abundant so far north as Maine, Ontario and Dakota, this noble game bird, now hunted to very near the extinction point, has had its range so restricted by the advance of civilization, for which is has a well grounded antipathy, that the most inaccessible mountains or swampy bottom lands, the borders of woodland streams that have never echoed to the whistle of a steamboat, are not too remote a habitation.” And further, “It cannot be long at the present rate of shrinkage before the turkey, in spite of its marvelous cleverness, will follow the great auk to extinction.”
The successful capture, breeding and release program has restored the Wild Turkey population to the point that it can be found in all of the lower 48 states. The combined effort of wildlife activists and hunting enthusiasts is responsible for one of the great conservation success stories. We have a resident Buck Hill population that probably numbers in the hundreds. (Yeah! Try to find them during hunting season.)
Of course for every success there are lamentable failures. During the last century we have lost a number of bird species for all time, including the Bachman’s Warbler, Dusky Seaside Sparrow, the Carolina Parakeet and in the year of the publication of this book, the Passenger Pigeon. Although hope springs eternal, I am increasingly skeptical of the chances that the Ivory-billed Woodpecker has survived.
The increasing threat to bird species, both here and worldwide is the continuing loss of habitat due to development, timbering and industrial farming. That is why our own efforts here in Barrett Township and Buck Hill to preserve open space for wildlife as well as for human enjoyment are so important. To that end we hope you will support the efforts of the Buck Hill Conservation Foundation to purchase and protect Chestnut Mountain.
Conservation Foundation 