Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Updated: June 8, 2025
The most interesting birds, those concerning which the Audubon Society is most solicitous, are the White Egrets. These snow-white models of grace and beauty have been persecuted for their plumes almost to the point of extermination, and here is situated the largest assemblage of them left in Florida.
There is now one warden in Florida who says that "before they get my rookery they will first have to get me." Thus far the protective work of the Audubon Association has been successful. Now there are twenty colonies, which contain all told, about 5,000 egrets and about 120,000 herons and ibises which are guarded by the Audubon wardens.
An hour's paddling brought the boys to a bay in which were several pretty keys, on one of which Dick saw a number of beautiful white birds. "What are those?" he asked. "Egrets," said Johnny. "Want ter shoot 'em?" "Of course not," replied Dick. "It's against the law, and wicked, besides. They are the loveliest birds there are and never ought to be killed just for fun." "We never kill 'em for fun.
Hornaday has dealt fully with the feather and plumage traffic after it enters the brokers' hands, and has proved conclusively that the plumes of egrets are gathered from the freshly killed birds.
They were crowned with towering shakoes of black-and-white monkey hair, fastened under their chins with beaded straps, and bristling with egrets. Their bodies were smeared with indigo and blotched with large discs of white paint; their faces were painted white, but their noses were covered with soot.
Hither the phaeton bends his rapid flight, and flocks of rosy flamingos here defy the fowler's cunning. All along the coast, opposite the Constable, and indeed on every uncultivated part of it to windward and leeward, are seen innumerable quantities of snow-white egrets, scarlet curlews, spoonbills and flamingos. Cayenne is capable of being a noble and productive colony.
The coast throughout has a most desolate aspect; the forest is not so varied as on the higher land; and the water-frontage, which is destitute of the green mantle of climbing plants that form so rich a decoration in other parts, is encumbered at every step with piles of fallen trees; and peopled by white egrets, ghostly storks, and solitary herons. In the evening we passed Almeyrim.
Some animals, like the rhino and the eland, have tick birds that sit upon their backs and eat the ticks. The egrets police the eland and capture all predatory ticks, while the rhino usually has half a dozen little tick birds sitting upon him. However, we were starting out in a day or so, and in a few days expected to learn a lot more about ticks than we then knew.
I do not say that no egret plumes could be picked up, but I do assert that the total quantity obtainable in one year in that way would be utterly trivial. No; the "ospreys" of the British feather market come from slaughtered egrets and herons, killed in the breeding season. Let the British public and the British Parliament make no mistake about that.
From the trackless jungles of New Guinea, round the world both ways to the snow-capped peaks of the Andes, no unprotected bird is safe. The humming-birds of Brazil, the egrets of the world at large, the rare birds of paradise, the toucan, the eagle, the condor and the emu, all are being exterminated to swell the annual profits of the millinery trade.
Word Of The Day
Others Looking