by Farley Mowat
The yellowlegs will serve as well as any other shorebird to underline the singularly unpleasant fact that mass shooting “into the flock” of any of the beach birds could result in crippling as many birds as were killed or fatally wounded. The majority of the flying wounded were fated to die within a matter of days, though some would linger on. Even a single pellet lodged in muscle tissue would sooner or later kill its host from lead poisoning.
The greater yellowlegs is a larger cousin of the lesser but, according to Dr. Bent, a more legitimate target: “The greater yellow-legs is a fine game bird. Large numbers have been shot in past years... a hunter near Newport, Rhode Island, shot 1,362 in eight seasons... Dr. Townsend reports that 463 greater yellow-legs were sent from Newburyport to a single stall in Boston market on one day. I know an old gunner who celebrated his eightieth birthday a few years ago by shooting 40 yellow-legs.
“It is a pity that the delightful days of bay-bird shooting which were such a pleasant feature of our earlier shooting days, had to be restricted. Those were glorious days we used to spend on Cape Cod... in the good old days when there were shorebirds to shoot, and we were allowed to shoot them, blinds were scattered all along the marshes and flats... wooden or tin decoys painted to imitate yellow-legs or plover were set up in the sand or mud within easy range. Here in a comfortable blind the hunter could lounge at ease, bask in the genial sun of early autumn, smoke his pipe and meditate, or watch the many interesting things about him... Suddenly he is wakened from his reveries by the note of the winter yellow-legs... he whistles an imitation of its note; the bird answers, and, looking for companionship circles nearer... scales down to the decoys, where it meets its fate. Perhaps a whole flock may slip in... There is an ever changing panorama of bird life in the marshes, full of surprises and delights for the nature lover.”
One of those “surprises and delights” was the group of beach birds collectively known as peeps because of the chick-like call notes of their foraging flocks. Peeps include all the “small fry”—such species as least, semi-palmated, and white-rumped sandpipers, semi-palmated and piping plovers, and the sanderling—most of which tend to associate with one another, forming flocks that were formerly of such magnitude, according to an early nineteenth-century observer, that “One hardly dares to estimate their numbers for fear of being taken for a mere prevaricator.”
Their flocks were huge, but individually the peeps were insignificant in size, weighing only an ounce or two. One might have expected such inconsequential little puffs of feathers to escape the massacre visited on their larger relatives, but as the bigger beach birds were progressively destroyed the guns of sportsmen, pot, and market hunters alike turned equally savagely upon the peeps.
“In the absence of larger birds, the gunners used to shoot these tiny birds in large numbers, and it must be admitted they were delicious eating. At his blind [the hunter] would call down with his tin whistle any passing flock. A projecting spit of mud... afforded a convenient alighting place for the Peeps, and was their death trap, for here they could be raked with gunfire. The terrified and bewildered survivors spring into the air and, circling over their dead and dying companions, afford several more effective shots which shower the victims down into the mud and water. Only a remnant of the flock escapes.
“The fact that so many of these birds could be easily killed with one shot and they were so fat and palatable, broiled or cooked in a pie, made them much sought after by the pot hunter. As large shore birds grew scarcer and it became more and more difficult for the gunner to fill his bag, ‘Peep’ shooting, even by sportsmen, was in vogue...
“To bring down a score of birds from a close-packed flock required but little skill... I have gone out to shoot these birds for the table and with five discharges I secured on one occasion 82 birds.”
The surprises and delights must have seemed endless in those days; but perhaps none surpassed those offered by the resplendent golden plover. This pigeon-sized bird, close companion and almost alter ego to the Eskimo curlew, came within a feather of sharing the curlew’s fate. In Dr. Bent’s words, its story “furnished a striking picture of the ruthless slaughter that has squandered our previous wealth of wild life.”
The golden plover’s original abundance, like that of the Eskimo curlew, was almost inconceivable. And so was the slaughter. Audubon described a typical massacre that took place near New Orleans in the spring of 1821: “The gunners had assembled in parties of from 20 to 50 at places where they knew from experience that the plovers would pass... When a flock approached, every individual stationed at nearly equal distances from each other whistled in imitation of the plover’s call note, on which the birds descended, wheeled and ran the gauntlet, as it were. Every gun went off in succession, and with such effect that I several times saw a flock of a hundred or more reduced to a miserable remnant of five or six... This sport was continued all day and at sunset when I left one of these lines of gunners they were as intent on killing more as they were when I arrived [before dawn]. A man near where I was seated had killed 63 dozens. I calculated the number [of hunters] in the field at 200, and supposing each to have shot only 20 dozens, 48,000 golden plovers would have fallen there that day.”
Edward Forbush described what it was like at Nantucket where, in the 1840s, “Two men killed enough to fill a tip-car two-thirds full [about 1,000 birds] in one day.” Twenty years later, in August of 1863, “Golden plover and Eskimo curlew landed on the island in such numbers as to darken the sun. Between seven and eight thousand were killed.” By 1890, golden plover had been so depleted in the East as to be of only negligible interest, but in that year, two Boston wholesalers of wild game received from the West forty barrels closely packed with curlews and plover—mostly plover.
Robert Roosevelt wrote of the flocks he hunted on Long Island in the 1860s: “Before us several acres were literally covered with the ranks of the much-desired, the matchless golden plover... not less than 3,000 closely packed... They rise with ‘a sounding roar’ to which the united reports of our four barrels savagely respond, and we hasten to secure our spoils.”
Famed naturalist W.H. Hudson knew the golden plover in Argentina (where it was called chorlo) during the latter part of the nineteenth century. “After its arrival in September, the plains in the neighbourhood of my home were peopled with immense flocks of this bird... there was a marshy ground [nearby, to which] the golden plover would resort every day at noon. They would appear in flocks from all quarters, flying like starlings in England coming to some great roosting centre. I would then mount my pony and gallop off joyfully to witness the spectacle. Long before coming in sight of them the noise of their voices would be audible. Coming to the marshy grounds I would pull up my horse and sit gazing with astonishment and delight at that immense multitude of birds... looking less like a vast flock than a floor of birds, in colour a rich, deep brown... a living, moving floor and a sounding one as well... it was like the sea [or] more like the wind on, let us say, thousands of tight-drawn wires... vibrating them to shrill sound... but it is indescribable, and unimaginable... [however] as population increases on the pampas these stupendous gatherings are becoming more and more rare. [In my boyhood] it was an exceptional thing for a man to possess a gun and if Chorlos were wanted a gaucho boy with a string a yard long with a ball of lead attached to each end could knock down as many as he liked.”
Hudson saw the golden bird in its golden age. However, by the last decades of that century, its destruction by Argentine gunners was second only to the butchery it was subjected to on the Great Plains of North America during its spring migration to the Arctic. By 1910, some American ornithologists were beginning to harbour the suspicion that the plover was in danger of extinction. Luckily that fate was averted when, in 1916, the spring hunt for shorebirds was prohibited in the United States and Canada and, still later, most were given full protection throughout the year.
Golden plover, peeps,
and other beach birds survive. Of the smaller shorebirds, only one, the piping plover, once a common breeding species all along the eastern seaboard from the Gulf of St. Lawrence to Virginia, seems in immediate danger. Although reduced to a tiny remnant population during the days of uncontrolled hunting, it was making a successful comeback until, in recent years, man so encroached upon the beaches where it breeds that it is now officially listed as a threatened species. At most, no more than 300 pairs can still be found in Atlantic Canada.
We may take some encouragement from the survival of the other species but, considering the nature of the beast that lurks within our own, it should be qualified by an ever-present awareness that the carnage committed on the shorebirds in the recent past can all too readily break out again directed at some other form of animate creation.
5. And Other Birds of Air
When Europeans arrived on the northeastern seaboard they encountered an infinity of ducks, geese, and swans amongst myriad other birds. Nicolas Denys gives some idea of their profusion in the 1620s. “All my people are so surfeited with game... they wish no more, whether Wild Geese, Ducks, Teal, Plover, Snipe... [even] our dogs lie beside this meat [without touching it] so much are they satiated with it... So great an abundance of Wild Geese, Ducks and Brant is seen that it is not believable, and they all make so great a noise at night that one has trouble to sleep.”
Two kinds of swans were amongst the multitudes. The trumpeter bred across the continent, perhaps as far south as Nova Scotia and east to Newfoundland. Today it is no longer to be seen east of Manitoba and its entire existing population has been reduced to about 2,000 pairs, mostly concealed in remote lake valleys in Alaska and British Columbia. The smaller, whistling swan once migrated along the Atlantic coasts in enormous flocks, but now is seldom if ever seen on the eastern seaboard.
The swans were slaughtered not for meat alone, but especially for their densely feathered breasts, known and much valued in the millinery and clothing trades as “swan skin.” There are records of over a thousand whistling swans being butchered on a single occasion, stripped of their breast skin and feathers, and left to rot.
Canada, snow, and brant geese abounded along the northeastern coasts, especially in migration. The snow goose is now never seen there; the brant is fast vanishing due partly to a mysterious die-off of eel grass, which is its main winter food, perhaps a result of our pollution of the sea. Old Honker, the Canada goose, still remains in evidence, but in sadly diminished numbers.
Some two dozen kinds of ducks originally lived in or migrated through the northeastern region and, as all early records attest, were found in astounding numbers. They were so abundant initially that most species remained relatively numerous until the beginning of the nineteenth century. Thereafter they were subjected to such prodigious carnage at the hands of market and sport hunters that many species were devastated to the point of near annihilation; and one was exterminated.
Sportsmen and commercial hunters alike shot them over live decoys, frequently from hunting boxes sunk in marshes or floating at surface level. In the 1800s, one such typical “hide” built by a market hunter yielded forty-four brant to a single shot and between 1,000 and 1,500 during one winter.
Batteries of 8-gauge shotguns were mounted in shoreside “blinds,” and smooth-bore guns with a calibre not much less than that of a small cannon were carried on swivels in low-slung punts that could be concealed in reeds and rushes. Some of these punt guns fired a quarter-pound powder charge and could kill or wound hundreds of swimming waterfowl with a single discharge.
Dr. Bent describes a favourite method used by New England sportsmen, the “duck stand”: “This consists of a small house or shanty equipped with sleeping bunks for several men... Along the shore is built a fence or stockade... there are portholes cut in the fence so that several men can shoot through it without being seen. The house and the fence are completely covered with branches of freshly cut pine and oak... which renders the whole structure practically invisible... The stand is built where there is a beach or a point in front of it... Sets of wooden decoys... are anchored at some distance out... A large supply of live decoys, semidomesticated black ducks, mallards and Canada geese, are kept in pens... behind the enclosure, and a few are tethered on the beach... or allowed to roam about... With all this elaborate equipment ready for action the gunners, I can hardly call them sportsmen, spend their time inside the house, smoking, talking, playing cards, or perhaps drinking, while one man remains outside on the watch... Should a flock... alight in the pond, he calls the others and they all take their places at the port-holes, with heavy guns, ready for the slaughter. The quacking of the decoys gradually tolls the wild birds in toward the beach... Each gunner knows which section of the flock he is to shoot at and waits in anticipation until the birds are near enough and properly bunched, when the signal is given to fire. If the affair has been well managed most of the flock have been killed or disabled on the water, but, as the frightened survivors rise in hurried confusion, a second volley is poured into them and only a few escape.”
Dr. Bent’s description of what happened to the wood duck is representative of the fate of many of its inland dwelling relatives: “The wood duck has always been able to hold its own against its natural enemies, but it has yielded to the causes of destruction brought about by the hand of man and by the encroachments of civilization. The wholesale cutting down of forests and draining of swampy woodlands has destroyed its nesting sites and made its favorite haunts untenable. Its beautiful plumage has always made it an attractive mark for gunners, collectors, and taxidermists, and its feathers have been in demand for making artificial trout flies. Almost anyone who has found a wood duck’s nest has been tempted to take the eggs home to hatch them, as the ducks are easily domesticated and make attractive pets. It is so tame and unsuspicious that it is easily shot in large numbers and it has been extensively caught in traps. From the great abundance, noted by all the earlier writers, its numbers have been reduced to a small fraction of what they were; in many places, where it was once abundant, it is now unknown or very rare; and it has everywhere been verging towards extinction. Fortunately our attention was called to these facts... before it was too late, and now that suitable laws have been enacted for its protection... it has been saved from extinction.”
Even the smallest of eastern seaboard ducks, the diminutive teal, received no quarter, as Audubon tells us: “Nothing can be more pleasing to an American sportsman than the arrival of this beautiful little duck... He sees advancing from afar... a flock of green-winged teals... Hark! two shots in rapid succession! Here and there lies a teal, with its legs quivering; there, one is whirling round in the agonies of death; some, which are only winged, quickly and in silence make their way toward a hiding place, while one, with a single pellet in his head, rises perpendicularly with uncertain beats, and falls with a splash on the water. The gunner has charged his tubes... and the frightened teals have dressed their ranks, and flying, now high, now low, seem curious to see the place where their companions have been left. Again they fly over the dangerous spot, and again receive the double shower of shot. Were it not that darkness has now set in, the carnage might continue until the sportsmen should no longer consider the thinned flock worthy of his notice. In this manner... I have seen upwards of six dozen shot by a single gunner in the course of one day.”
Nineteenth- and early twentieth-century sport hunting amounted to nothing less than unbridled massacre. During one autumnal weekend in 1884, my own paternal grandfather and three companions armed with double-barrelled 10-gauge shotguns, shot 140 canvasbacks, 227 redheads, about 200 scaups, 84 blacks, about five dozen teal, and enough additional assorted kinds to quite literally fill the four-wheeled farm wagon that brought them and their trophies home. I have some old sepia-toned photographs of the results of that particular foray, which was by no means unique.
Although sport hunting was bad enough, it was as n
othing to the slaughter conducted by market hunters. During the 1880s, millions of wild ducks, geese, and swans were sold in public markets and private butcher shops in towns and cities of Canada and the United States, to which must be added millions more that spoiled because of lack of refrigeration or were wounded or killed but not recovered. This was big business, employing thousands of commercial hunters, wholesalers, and other middlemen. Incidentally, the manufacturers of guns, shot, and shell earned enormous profits.
At the peak of this industrial destruction it is believed that eight million waterfowl were being slaughtered annually. By the beginning of World War I, this massacre—both spring and fall—had so reduced waterfowl populations that the extirpation of a dozen or more species seemed assured. It was at this crucial juncture that Canada and the United States collaborated in framing the Migratory Birds Convention Act, which became law in 1917 and, for the first time, provided a mechanism for protecting waterfowl and many other migratory birds. After the war, prohibition of the spring hunt and the imposition of bag limits began to allow most ducks and geese to recover somewhat.
One species, the flamboyant harlequin duck, has not managed to do so, and its continuing survival remains in doubt. For the piebald Labrador duck, protection came too late. This large and strikingly patterned black-and-white bird was originally known as the pie duck. It was unique in that it was found only on the northeastern seaboard of America, breeding on islands in the Gulf of St. Lawrence, on the Labrador coast, and, probably, on the Newfoundland coast; wintering along the shores of New England perhaps as far south as Cape Hatteras. Closely related to the eider family, it resembled them in many of its habits and suffered in the same way from New England and Canadian eggers and feather pirates who raided the island colonies of both, stealing the eggs, then ripping up the nests and shooting females to obtain the valuable down.