Brown pelican

The fall and rise (and fall?) of a "bellwether bird"

Photo by Teréz Pechová-Hurst / Wikimedia

If you could zip back to the fashionable neighborhoods of New York City a hundred and forty years ago, you’d encounter strange tableaus of nature: stuffed hummingbirds, or maybe an entire owl’s head, or carefully arranged emu feathers, or perhaps a pair of bird wings in flight—all garishly affixed to fancy lady hats.

This northern fashion trend turned parts of the South—the Florida coast especially—into vast slaughter yards, where birds were killed by the tens of thousands. There’s some good news in this story: enraged bird lovers wound up launching one of the nation’s first conservation efforts; the National Audobon Society was born in these yeras. The bad news, though, is that their success simply pushed haberdashers towards more subdued styles. Suddenly, the brown pelican found itself at sudden risk.

That the brow…