. The birds of California : a complete, scientific and popular account of the 580 species and subspecies of birds found in the state. Birds; Birds. The Black-footed Albatross It is, therefore, on account of the exactions of family cares upon the adults that immature birds, or "brown goonies," are much more fre- quently seen upon the high seas. "By Executive Order Xo. 1019, dated February 3, 1909, the 'Hawaiian Islands Reservation' was established. This national bird preserve includes Laysan, Xecker, and adjacent small islands, upon which great numbers of pelagic birds nest, such
. The birds of California : a complete, scientific and popular account of the 580 species and subspecies of birds found in the state. Birds; Birds. The Black-footed Albatross It is, therefore, on account of the exactions of family cares upon the adults that immature birds, or "brown goonies," are much more fre- quently seen upon the high seas. "By Executive Order Xo. 1019, dated February 3, 1909, the 'Hawaiian Islands Reservation' was established. This national bird preserve includes Laysan, Xecker, and adjacent small islands, upon which great numbers of pelagic birds nest, such as Albatrosses, Shearwaters, and Terns. Persistent rumors have circulated in the news- papers of late, to the effect that Japanese were planning to land on the rookeries to destroy every bird obtainable, the feathers to be saved for various commercial purposes and the bodies to be made into fertilizer. The fact that not a few species, which are confined in the breeding season to these small islands, would thus be exterminated, makes the establishment of this preserve with little doubt the most important step, from a strictly ornithological standpoint, in the history of bird preservation in this country. The annihilation of species was threatened" {The Condor, March, igog). The fears expressed in the foregoing paragraph were unhappily realized that same season. A party of feather-hunters, Japanese, but acting under the orders of a certain dissolute German who had formerly been connected with the guano industry, landed on Laysan and proceed- ed to slaughter its feath- ered inhabitants. In January of the following year the U. S. revenue cutter Thetis visited the distant scene, found and captured the poachers, twenty-three of them, and returned to Hono- lulu with the miscreants and their booty, consist- ing of the plumes of upwards of quarter of a million birds. A subse- quent expedition report - ed on the havoc wrought:- "Here on every side are bones bleaching in the su
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Photo credit: © Library Book Collection / Alamy / Afripics
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Keywords: ., bookcentury1900, bookdecade1920, booksubjectbirds, bookyear1923
