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Page 22
Had we not been haunted by this vision of death which we were
constantly meeting wherever women were congregated, we might have been
happy in the fair land of rose blossoms and magnolias where we now
sojourned. The air was soft and balmy, and the atmosphere filled us
with a serene, restful languor quite new to those who had been
accustomed to the brisker habits of a colder clime. Besides the birds
there were many human visitors from the North spending the winter
months here. Some sought this warmer climate for their health, others
for pleasure, and these also soon fell into the easy-going,
happy-go-lucky ways induced by the sluggish climate.
Among the birds the waxwings most readily acquired this delightful
Southern habit of taking life easy. In fact the waxwings are inclined
to be lazy, except when they are nesting; they are the most deliberate
creatures one can find, but very foppish and neat in their dress.
Never will you find a particle of dust on their silky plumage, and the
pretty red dots on their wings and tails look always as bright as if
kept in a bandbox. They have, indeed, just reason to be proud of
themselves, for they are very beautiful.
Hunters by scores were after them with bag and gun mercilessly killing
them for the New York millinery houses. The slaughter was terrible,
and made more easy for the hunters by reason of the poor birds flocking
together so closely in such large numbers when they alighted in circles
as is their habit. As they came down in dense droves to get their
food, the red dots on their wing tips almost overlapping those of their
fellows, dozens were slain by a single shot. They were very fond of
the berries of the cedar trees, and after the other foods were gone
they hovered there in great numbers. Here too, the hunters followed
them and made awful havoc in their ranks. One man made the cruel boast
that the winter previous he had killed one thousand cedar-birds for hat
trimmings.
Many of our family had located for a time near the coast, but here too,
on these sunny plains, the death messengers followed us and slew us by
the thousands.
We learned that one bird man handled thirty thousand bird skins that
season. Another firm shipped seventy thousand to the city, and still
the market called for more and yet more. The appetite of the god could
not be appeased.
I am sure this account of the loss of bird life must have seemed
appalling to my mother, for I heard her moan sadly when it was talked
about.
It was during my stay in the Southern islands that I first saw the
white egret, whose beautiful sweeping plumes, like the silken train of
a court lady, have so long been the spoils of woman, that the bird is
almost extinct. As these magnificent feathers appear upon the bird
only through the mating and nesting season, the cruelty of the act is
still more dastardly. The attachment of the parent birds for their
young is very beautiful to witness, yet this devotion, which should be
their safeguard, is seized upon for their destruction, for so great is
the instinct of protecting love they refuse to leave their young when
danger is near, and are absolutely indifferent to their own safety.
Never shall I forget one sad incident which occurred while I was there.
Overhanging the water was an ancestral nest belonging to a family of
egrets which had occupied it for some seasons. Unlike the American
human species, in whom local attachment is not largely developed, and
who take a new house every moving day, the egret repairs and fixes over
the old house year after year, putting in a new brace there, adding
another stick here, to make it firm enough to bear the weight of the
mother and the three young birds which always comprise the brood.
The three pale-blue eggs in this nest had been duly hatched, and the
fond mother was now brooding over her darlings with every demonstration
of maternal affection. She was a beautiful creature with her graceful
movement, her train of plumes, and her long neck gracefully curved.
The quick sharp boom, boom of the guns had been echoing through the
swamp for some time, and the men were now coming nearer. The efforts
of the poor mother to shield her babies were piteous, but the hunters
did not want them. Their scant plumage is worthless for millinery
purposes. Possibly the mother might have escaped had she been willing
to leave her dear ones; but she would not desert them, and was shot in
the breast as the reward of her devotion. The nestlings were left to
starve.
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