Woman in plumed hat

Feathers on ladies’ hats were the rage in post-Victorian society, but they spelled death to many species of colonial nesting birds, and spawned the creation of the National Wildlife Refuge System and a battery of Federal and state laws, as well as numerous private conservation organizations including the National Audubon Society, all of which aimed to halt the decline in egrets, herons, terns, and songbirds whose feathers were prized for fashion and whose eggs were snatched for consumption. As recounted by the National Audubon Society, the outcry began in Massachusetts – from women, interestingly – in 1896, where “politically correct” ladies of the time refused to buy or wear feather-bedecked hats and clothing made from birds, and where they formed the Massachusetts Audubon Society; Pennsylvania conservationists followed suit, and by 1899, 15 other states had citizen-based Audubon societies. The New York State Audubon Plumage Law in 1910 banned the sale of plumes from all native birds in the Empire State, a credit to the pressure brought on state governments by incensed residents in an era of increasing conservation consciousness. The Federal Government followed in 1918 with the Federal Migratory Bird Treaty Act, which aimed to protect migratory birds throughout the North American continental flyways and led to agreements with Great Britain (for Canada), Mexico, Japan, and the former Soviet Union to conserve species that transcended arbitrary political boundaries. The legal wild bird trade was dead, residual trading in bird parts and feathers confined to the netherworld of poachers and denizens of the underworld, and photos such as these reduced to quaint relics of a bygone era along with those of zeppelins and horseless carriages.