Page 42 - Our Vanishing Wild Life
P. 42

 20 OUR VANISHING WILD LIFE
was acquired in 1900. Since that time, Dr. Leonard C. Sanford pro- cured in 1910 two living birds from a bird dealer who obtained them on the coast of Virginia. We have done our utmost to induce our pair to breed, but without any further results than nest-building.
The loss of the trumpeter swan (Olor americanus) will not be so great, nor felt so keenly, as the blotting out of the whooping crane. It so closely resembles the whistling swan that only an ornithologist can recognize the difference, a yellow spot on the side of the upper mandible, nearitsbase. Thewhistlingswanyetremainsinfairnumbers,butitis to be feared that soon it will go as the trumpeter has gone.
The American Flamingo, Scarlet Ibis and Roseate Spoonbill are three of the most beautiful and curious water-haunting birds of the tropics. OnceallthreespeciesinhabitedportionsofthesouthernUnited States ; but now all three are gone from our star-spangled bird fauna. The brilliant scarlet plumage of the flamingo and ibis, and the exquisite pink rose-color and white of the spoonbill naturally attracted the evil eyes of the "milliner's taxidermists" and other bird-butchers. From
Floridathesebirdsquicklyvanished. Thesixgreatbreedingcoloniesof Flamingoes on Andros Island, Bahamas, have been reduced to two, and from Prof. E. A. Goeldi, of the State Museum Goeldi, Para, Brazil, have come bitter complaints of the slaughter of scarlet ibises in South Amer- ica by plume-hunters in European pay.
I know not how other naturalists regard the future of the three spe- cies named above, but my opinion is that unless the European feather trade is quickly stopped as to wild plumage, they are absolutely certain tobeshotintototaloblivion,withinaveryfewyears. Theplumageof these birds has so much commercial value, for fishermen's flies as well as for women's hats, that the birds will be killed as long as their feathers can be sold and any birds remain alive.
Zoologically, the flamingo is the most odd and interesting bird on the American continent except the emperor penguin. Its beak baffles de- scription, its long legs and webbed feet are a joke, its nesting habits are amazing, and its food habits the despair of most zoological-garden keep- ers. Millions of flamingos inhabit the shores of a number of small lakes in the interior of equatorial East Africa, but that species is not brilliant scarlet all over the neck and head, as is the case with our species.
If the American flamingo, scarlet ibis and roseate spoonbill, one or all of them, are to be saved from total extinction, efforts must be made in each of the countries in which they breed and live. Their preserva- tion is distinctly a burden upon the countries of South America that lie eastwardoftheAndes,andonYucatan,CubaandtheBahamas. The time has come when the Government of the Bahama Islands should sternly forbid the killing of any more flamingos, on any pretext what- ever ; and if the capture of living specimens for exhibition purposes mili- tates against the welfare of the colonies, they should forbid that also.
The Upland Plover, or "Bartramian Sandpiper."—Apparently this is the next shore-bird species that will follow the Eskimo curlew into


























































































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