[TN-Bird] GBBC & "Pale Male" editorial/NY TIMES
- From: Dthomp2669@xxxxxxx
- To: tn-bird@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Wed, 23 Feb 2005 12:56:02 EST
Have had quite a few "thank yous" for posting the articles on "Pale Male," so
here's an interesting editorial which goes into the Great Backyard Bird Count
and extols the virtues of the lady who fought against fashions using birds
and plumage.
Dee Thompson
Nashville, TN
From yesterday's NEW YORK TIMES.
February 22, 2005EDITORIAL OBSERVER
How Pale Male and Flocks of Others Fly Freely for Their Annual Census
By FRANCIS X. CLINES
efore there was Pale Male, New York's famously evicted red-tailed hawk, there
was Harriet Hemenway, a pioneer of the Audubon movement. Her disgust at a
fashion trend of a century ago - piling stuffed, slain birds atop women's hats
-
sparked the early ecology revolution that drove the brutal feather trade from
the land.
Last weekend, the annual Great Backyard Bird Count took place, with amateur
ornithologists across the nation tabulating their fluttery neighbors. In this
happy task, Mrs. Hemenway deserves to share in the celebrity that is still
being poured upon Pale Male and his mate, Lola, as they rebuild their luxury
condominium nest on the 12th-floor window cornice at 927 Fifth Avenue.
The moment was perfect, for it is the 100th anniversary of the National
Audubon Society, so firmly rooted in the revolt of Mrs. Hemenway and armies of
her
Victorian sisters who organized state by state. Their outrage at the bloody
rookery slaughters that supplied gruesomely beautiful hat decor led to the
first
Audubon victories in protecting birds and their plumage by force of law. The
humane spirit they embodied - that's no way to treat a bird - drives the
modern saga in which Audubon officials prevailed upon the condo board to
restore
Pale Male and Lola to their perch.
The latest word from Fifth Avenue bird watchers, incidentally, is that the
hawks were observed mating at precisely 1:45 p.m. 10 days ago on the parapet of
a building a few blocks away. No one said bird watchers were discreet, but
they are enthusiastic and were out in droves last weekend, sending the census
of
the winged to the Cornell Lab of Ornithology. Countless new watchers have been
inspired by Pale Male's travails, according to Audubon officials. The New
York chapter senses fresh possibilities, like negotiating with the city to
protect low-flying woodcocks, due to arrive any week, from collisions with the
night
lights of skyscrapers.
John James Audubon himself, the great nature illustrator, would understand,
even if he far preferred New York's wilderness fringe to its teeming
tenderloin. He retired in New York in the 1840's after decades of roaming
America to
catalog and paint its birds so gloriously. In a new biography, Richard Rhodes
describes how Audubon bought 14 pristine acres right on the Hudson River, down
a
hillside from what would someday be West 155th Street. He savored the
riverfront pines, hemlocks and oaks, the hillside dogwoods, and the creatures
that
darted and flew past his house. One of his limited ventures downtown was to
shoot
and draw urban rodents (with the mayor's permission, according to Robert
Sullivan's book called "Rats").
"How kind it is to come to see me," Audubon greeted one visitor from
downtown, where the northernmost border was then 14th Street. "And how wise to
leave
that crazy city!"
Crazy or not, Manhattan is particularly apt for the national bird census, for
another Audubon pioneer, Frank Chapman, took a sidewalk census of city women
and their hats over a century ago, at the height of the feather craze. He
could identify 174 birds and 40 species in his stroll, including the wings,
tails,
heads or entire bodies of 3 bluebirds, 2 redheaded woodpeckers, 9 Baltimore
orioles, 5 blue jays, 21 common terns, a saw-whet owl and even a prairie hen,
according to the research of Jennifer Price, a historian and author. Back then,
a single hat could be considered chic for sporting an owl's head, some
hummingbirds and four or five warblers.
Mrs. Hemenway and other women rebelled as a moral issue, demanding
non-necrotic millinery. They helped stoke the modern conservation and feminist
movements. As part of their legacy, birds flew more freely before the eyes of
the
weekend census takers, safe from hat makers and at least one condo board.
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