Sea of Slaughter (8 page)

The feathered cape woven by the beach birds rippled over
all
the beaches of eastern North America until the European invaders tore it to bloody shreds. What follows is a mere synoptic record, restricted to only a few of the species involved in one of the great atrocities of our times. Much is quoted directly from Dr. Bent's monumental record,
Life Histories of North American Shorebirds.

We begin with the starling-size red-backed sandpiper (now called dunlin), an Arctic nesting species which, like so many shorebirds, winters in South America.

“These birds, in conjunction with several others sometimes collect in such flocks as to seem, at a distance, a large cloud of thick smoke... it forms a very grand and interesting appearance. At such times, the gunners make prodigious slaughter among them; while, as the showers of their companions fall, the whole body [of the flocks] often alight, or descend to the surface with them, till the sportsman is completely satiated with destruction.

“During their aerial excursions, while whirling about, they crowd so close together that many are killed at a single shot... Mr. Brasher informed me that he killed 52 by discharging both barrels... and I have known one instance where an officer of the Army bagged 96 birds from one discharge.

“In former years extensive flights took place [on the south shore of Lake Erie] upon which bushels of them are said to have fallen to a single gun... On October 29, 1897, I killed 53 of these birds out of two flocks... and this is the nearest approach to a flight that has occurred of late years.”

Most sportsmen refused to believe that the disappearance of the beach birds had anything to do with shooting them. In typical fashion, Toronto sportsmen explained the disappearance of the former enormous flocks as a result of their having “been scared away by the greater numbers of railroad engines.”

The knot, called beach robin or red-breast by hunters, was a very abundant migrant all along the Atlantic coast of North America during the nineteenth century. Before 1850, wrote George Mackay, “at Chatham, Nauset, Wellfleet, Cape Cod... Tuckernuck, Muskeget Islands they would collect in exceedingly large numbers, estimates of which were useless. Often when riding on the stage coach on Cape Cod, immense numbers of these birds could be seen as they rose up in clouds. It was at this time that the vicious practice of ‘fire-lighting' then prevailed and a very great number were thus killed on the flats at night... The procedure was for two men to start after dark at half tide, one carrying a lighted lantern [to dazzle them], the other to seize the birds, bite their necks, and put them in a bag... they approached the birds on their hands and knees... I have it from an excellent authority that he has seen, in the spring, six barrels of these birds taken in this manner, at one time on the deck of the Cape Cod packet for Boston. He has also seen barrels of them which had spoiled during the voyage, thrown overboard in Boston harbour. The price of the birds at that time was 10 cents per dozen. Mixed with them were turnstones and plover. Not one of these birds had been shot, all having been taken by ‘fire-light'.”

The dowitcher, a snipe-like bird called brown-back by market hunters and the sporting fraternity, was equally persecuted, as described by Dr. Bent: “Immense numbers were shot in the past... They are the least shy of shorebirds... easily decoyed... and keep close together. They alight in a compact bunch and many are killed by a first discharge, and those that remain fly a short distance away when hearing what they think to be the call of a deserted comrade [a decoy call] they wheel about and come skimming bravely back to the murderous spot... again and again they are shot at... the remainder loath to leave their dead and dying companions [until only] one or two may escape.

“They have decreased very fast... and we now see them [only] singly or in bunches not exceeding 10 or 12.”

Wilson's snipe, or jack snipe, is one of the few shorebirds still listed as a “game bird” and so it can be legally shot: “Exceedingly abundant [in the latter half of the 1800s] as the oft-quoted achievement of James A. Pringle will illustrate. He was not a market hunter but a gentleman sportsman who shot for the fun of it and gave the birds away to his friends. His excuses for excessive slaughter and his apologies for not killing more are interesting; he writes:
The birds being only in the country for a short time I had no mercy on them and killed all I could, for a snipe once missed might never be seen again.
Between 1867 and 1887 he shot, on his favourite hunting grounds in Louisiana, 69,087 snipe but his scores fell off during the next ten years for he increased his grand total of snipe only to 78,602. His best day, undoubtedly a world record, was December 11, 1877 when he shot in six hours 366 snipe.”

The lesser yellowlegs is a rather small, long-legged wader that Dr. Bent felt should not “be in the gamebird class, though I must confess it has some gamey qualities. It is, at times, absurdly tame; it decoys very easily, returns again and again to the slaughter and its little body is so small that many lives must be sacrificed to make a decent bag. However it is interesting sport to sit in a well-made blind on a marsh, with decoys skilfully arranged, and show one's skill in whistling up these lively and responsive little birds. After all, [sport] gunning is not so much a means of filling up the larder as an excuse for getting out to enjoy the beauties of nature and the ways of its wild creatures.” He adds that one noted sportsman “killed 106 yellow-shanks by discharging both barrels of his gun into a flock while they were sitting along the beach.”

The destruction of the yellowlegs did not take place in the North alone. As late as 1925, Stuart Danforth observed them migrating through Puerto Rico, where they were “surprisingly tame, and it is slaughter, not sport to shoot them... hunters kill as many as twenty with one shot.” And Dr. Alexander Wetmore, visiting Argentina in 1926, noted “migrant flocks, many of whose members offered sad evidence of inhospitable treatment at the hands of Argentine gunners, in the shape of broken or missing legs.”

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.