Identifier: birdlore141912nati (find matches)
Title: Bird lore
Year: 1899 (1890s)
Authors: National Committee of the Audubon Societies of America National Association of Audubon Societies for the Protection of Wild Birds and Animals National Audubon Society
Subjects: Birds Birds Ornithology
Publisher: New York City : Macmillan Co.
Contributing Library: Smithsonian Institution Libraries
Digitizing Sponsor: Biodiversity Heritage Library

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he expeditionas a representative of the Biological Survey. Professor Bryan had visitedLaysan in 1903 and was thus able to compare existing with past conditions.He writes: This wholesale killing has had an appalling effect on the colony. No onecan estimate the thousands, perhaps hundreds of thousands, of birds thathave been wilfully sacrificed on Laysan to the whim of fashion and the lustfor gain. It is conservative to say that fuUy one-half the number of birdsof both species of Albatross that were so abundant everywhere in 1903 havebeen killed. The colonies that remain are in a sadly decimated condition.Often a colony of a dozen or more birds will not have a single young. Over alarge part of the island, in some sections a hundred acres in a place, that tenyears ago was thickly inhabited by Albatrosses, not a single bird remains,while heaps of the slain lie as mute testimony of the awful slaughter of thesebeautiful, harmless, and, without doubt, beneficial inhabitants of the high seas.
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Report of an Expedition to Laysan Islands in 1911 283 While the main activity of the plume-hunters was directed against theAlbatrosses, they were by no means averse to killing anything in the bird linethat came their way. As a consequence large numbers of all the differentspecies of birds that occur on this island were killed. Among the speciesslaughtered may be mentioned Black-footed Albatross, Laysan Albatross, SootyTern, Gray-backed Tern, Noddy Tern, Hawaiian Tern, White Tern, BoninIsland Petrel, Wedge-tailed Shearwater, Christmas Island Shearwater, Red-tailed Tropic Bird, Blue-faced Booby, Red-footed Booby, Man-o-war Bird,

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