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Bird Conservation
Fashion items like hats were the main products of the feather trade, but other items made from birds, including fans, household dusters, pens, and pillows also contributed to bird hunting. While these items are available today, the feathers come from farm-raised non-migratory species. PSNH Curator Arthur Norton was the conduit between the PSNH and the Maine Ornithological Society, the first statewide league of people interested in birds, established in 1897. Prompted by declining colonies of gulls, terns, and other seabirds, the Ornithological Society successfully lobbied for a Maine law protecting all non-game birds, nests, and eggs in 1901.
The Federal Migratory Bird Treaty Act (MBTA) of 1918 prohibits hunting, killing, trading, and shipping of migratory birds or their parts and regulates commercial plume trade.
In 2004, the MBTA was expanded to include all native Birds in the United States, including 1,093 species. The National Audubon Society credited the MBTA, “with saving numerous species from extinction...millions, if not billions of other birds.”
When the PSNH merged with Maine Audubon in 1961, the mission changed from education and understanding of the natural world, primarily through preserving and collecting of specimens, to protecting live animals and conserving wildlife habitat.
Canada Goose, Whooping Crane, and Great Egret displayed at Maine Historical Society, 2023
Selected bird specimens formerly in the PSNH collections, Collections of Maine State Museum.
The Canada Goose known for its iconic V-formation flying pattern and loud honking call during spring migrations northward and southbound in the fall, is a marker of the changing seasons. Canada Geese mate for life, and like other waterfowl, their populations were at risk during the early 1900s due to overhunting, egg harvesting, and feather use.
Some Canada Goose colonies are no longer migrating, instead becoming residents in park ponds and golf courses where the water no longer freezes over in the winter due to warming temperatures. Normally, Canada geese fly back to nest where they were hatched in Northern Canada, but resident geese have no migration memories.
Because of their flexibility regarding habitat, Canada Goose populations are at moderate risk to climate change, with a 17% loss at two degrees Celsius warming.
Dr. Henry H. Brock (1864-1953) of Portland was an avid bird hunter and donated over 600 mounted birds to the PSNH along with exotic bird skins. Brock’s collection included a European corncrake (Crex crex), one of the few in Maine that Brock shot at Falmouth in 1889, and a Steeler’s Eider (Polysticta stelleri), the first ever taken outside of Alaska, shot at Pine Point.
Portland Society for Natural History interior with Cranes, ca. 1965
Item Contributed by
Maine Historical Society
Henry Brock shot and prepared a Whooping Crane (Grus americana), around 1900 which became part of the PSNH collection and display. The Crane mount is in the care of the Maine State Museum as of 2023.
The Whooping Crane is the tallest bird in what is now called North America reaching up to five feet tall, weighing about 15 pounds, and has a wingspan of seven feet. Whooping Crane populations declined to around 20 birds in the 1940s because of over-hunting and agricultural operations taking over their nesting and feeding grounds. Whooping Cranes are a species of high concern in 2023, listed as federally endangered in the United States. Through captive breeding, wetland management with private and governmental landowners, and by using an ultralight glider that teaches young Cranes how to migrate, numbers have risen to about 800 in 2023.
By 1914, the breeding plumes of the Great Egret (Ardea alba) sold for up to $80 per ounce, about $3,500 in 2023. While no exact records exist or how many wild Egrets died for the hat and fashion trade, historians estimate plume hunters killed between five million to 200 million birds annually.
Fashion designers sought out long plumes, called aigrettes, that grow on the Egrets’ backs during mating season. Hunters killed the birds during breeding, meaning that mating pairs diminished and nests went untended, plummeting Egret populations by about 95% in 1900. Great Egret populations began to recover after legislation banned plume hunting around 1910. Although they are affected by habitat loss and environmental contamination in 2023, Egret populations have rebounded and are stable.
John James Audubon
The Great Egret is the symbol of the National Audubon Society, one of the oldest environmental organizations in North America, founded to protect birds from being killed for their feathers.
The Audubon Society named themselves after artist, naturalist, hunter, explorer, and slave owner, John James Audubon (1785-1851). Audubon was born in Haiti to a French ship captain who traded slaves. The identity of Audubon’s mother is not clear—some say she was French or Haitian Creole, he reported her as Spanish. Black ornithologist, J. Drew Lanham asked in 2021, "Does the possibility that John James Audubon may have been a man of mixed race give him a pass on his racism?"
Audubon visited Maine during 1831 and 1833 with his enslaved servants. He traveled to Eastport, and stayed with the Lincoln family in Dennysville on his way to Labrador, observing, drawing, and hunting birds. Some appear in his monumental, Birds of America. Audubon’s actions buying and selling people, working against the abolitionist cause in the US and abroad, and supporting theories of white supremacy places him in another light, and provides a space for re-evaluating Whiteness and past exclusivity in conservation movements.
For decades, hats decorated with feathers were a fashion staple in America. Women and men wore hats decorated with Bird parts, ranging from a single feather, to whole, taxidermy Birds. Just as some don’t realize their impact on climate change in 2023, people in the late 1800s had limited understanding about how the feathers got on their hats. Some thought the feathers were naturally molted without killing the Birds. Others thought there were never-ending populations of Birds in the world, and a few likely thought their human needs outweighed nature.
After the Migratory Bird Treaty Act, people adorned hats with the feathers of nonmigratory Birds like Chickens and Ostriches. However, advocacy groups continued to pressure the industry, and coupled with the advent of the automobile, large, feathered hats became impractical, and went out of fashion.
Men’s military and fraternal organization hats, like women’s hats of the time, often included feather decorations. William Sheafe (1861-1935) of Portland and Millbridge owned a General Regulation chapeau featuring a red Masonic cross emblem and Ostrich feather plume in the center.
Newell Gabriel, a member of the Penobscot Nation, wore an upright headdress made of Eagle feathers, and a beaded collar, both symbols of leadership in typical Wabanaki style.
Gabriel served as the Penobscot Representative to the Maine Legislature from 1925 to 1927. Because they are sovereign nations, Indigenous peoples in the United States have their own rules for collecting and keeping feathers, including Eagle feathers, and these rights are recognized by the United States in both law and policy. For non-Indigenous peoples, it is illegal to own any federally regulated feathers or even bits of eggshells without permits.
Some cultures associate Owls with omens, or as messengers of death. According to Gabriel Frey, Passamaquoddy culture views the symbol of the Owl similarly, “though for us the message of death is really a message of change, and wapi-kuhkukhahs, the Snowy Owl, brings with him change for the better.”
wapi-kuhkukhahs / Snowy Owl basket, 2022 is the first collaboration between Gal Frey and her son, Gabriel Frey. Gabriel cut, pounded, and processed the ash, using only the very inner sapling sections that are snowy white. It took four years and many trees to get enough ash to weave this purse basket, using a porcupine or pointed technique in the front to mimic the owl feathers. Gal Frey beaded the Owl face on the lid of the basket, using over 20 different hues of white, creating the illusion of three dimensions.
Gabriel also notes, in Maliseet-Passamaquoddy language, Itasu, neke Koluskap nekolat skicinu, wapi-kuhkukhahs oloqiyess etoli-mocimkahqihkek. This translates as, "It is said that when Koluskap left the people, the Snowy Owl went into the thick woods." Kolusckap, also spelled Glooscap and Gluscabe, is the main figure in Wabanaki creation histories. He taught the Wabanaki how to make tools, how to live, and showed them ways to respect land and resources. The basket is a miniature of the traditional Wabanaki pack basket made to fit under the gunwale of a canoe, updated for 21st century uses as a purse.
Snowy Owl and Herring Gull
Collections of the Maine State Museum
The Snowy Owl’s winter territory includes Maine. They spend summers far north of the Arctic Circle hunting small rodents and other prey. Snowy Owls are white birds with varying amounts of black or brown markings on the body and wings.
Climate change is degrading and reducing the habitat that Snowy Owls require in order to reproduce and survive, since the melting polar ice is reducing habitat for their prey. In times when food is scarce, some Owls may not reproduce at all. Snowy Owl populations in North America declined about 64% between 1970 and 2014, and the 2023 population is estimated at 30,000 remaining.
The National Audubon Society reports that the Snowy Owl is at high risk to climate change. At two degrees Celsius warming, the Snowy Owl will lose 77% of its range; at three degrees Celsius, it will lose 93%.
Herring Gulls (Larus argentatus), generally called Seagulls, live near water, especially along the Atlantic Coast. They prefer isolated, predator-free sites like islands for breeding and nesting on the ground, but live away from the colony during the rest of the year to feed at sea, along coasts, and at landfills.
Gull populations are thriving in Maine today, but they were threatened to near extinction at the turn of the 19th century. Hunted
or their feathers and eggs, Gulls were at the center of the 1901 legislation the Maine Ornithological Society promoted, setting regulations for collecting bird nests.
According to the National Audubon Society, because of their large range, at two degrees Celsius warming, Seagulls will be minimally impacted by climate change, losing about 30% of their habitat.
As the largest and most sparsely populated state in New England, Maine represents a significant portion of the breeding range for many eastern woodland Bird species.
Since 1970, the United States and Canada have lost three billion breeding Birds, or one in four Birds. Over 70 species have reached a tipping point of losing 50% of their breeding populations.
Maine Audubon reported even greater declines for Maine in certain groups in 2019, including 74% of all grassland species, 68% percent of shorebird species, 73% of species that eat aerial insects, and 64% of all eastern forest Bird species. The only Bird group with increasing
numbers are wetland Birds, driven by increased numbers of ducks and geese.
Some of the Bird population losses are due to climate change, direct causes from loss of habitat due to development, and pesticide use that also contributes to collapsing Insect populations, important food sources for Birds.
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