Hunting coastal birds was 

 an old custom in North Carolina. 

 Long before market gunning, 

 watermen's families savored 

 wild bird dishes ranging from 

 fried terns to stewed blue heron. 

 In fact, few bird species eluded 

 the cook pot. At Salter Path, 

 watermen and their wives 

 captured songbirds for food by 

 casting fishing nets among 

 yaupon and wax myrtle bushes. 

 Harkers Islanders stewed so 

 many waterfowl that they 

 became known, disparagingly, 

 as "looneaters." And children up 

 and down the coast did not think 

 twice about snaring a brown 

 pelican or a snowy egret. They 

 made for good sport and a tasty 

 meal. 



There was a feeling of 

 abundance about all coastal bird 

 life. Even raiding a rookery's 

 eggs did not seem wasteful. 

 Wild bird eggs were enormously 

 popular. Every spring, the 

 townspeople of Beaufort 

 traipsed into Town Marsh in 

 search of fresh eggs. The 

 citizens of Wilmington made 

 excursions as far as Caswell 

 Beach to do their "egging." 

 Street vendors might sell a few 

 eggs and birds, but, by and 

 large, local people hunted to meet 

 their own needs. 



Hunting coastal birds on that 

 limited scale did not seem to irrepara- 

 bly harm their numbers. When 

 Chowan County lawyer William 

 Valentine visited Beaufort in the fall 

 of 1853, he was astounded by the 

 great flocks on Core Sound. In his 

 diary, Valentine wrote that the birds 

 "darkened the waters in thousands 

 upon thousands." 



That changed after the Civil War. 

 A new fashion of decorating ladies' 

 hats with bird plumes fueled a 

 maddening, international hunt for 

 feathers. The nation's millinery trade 

 employed more than 82,000 workers, 

 mostly in New York City, and making 

 ladies' hats was a big business. The 



Herring gull 



Vellie Matthews 



milliners adorned hats with plumes 

 from birds ranging from flamingos to 

 hummingbirds. 



Unhindered by conservation laws, 

 Carolinians hunted coastal birds as 

 never before. Many desperately 

 needed the money. Agricultural 

 depressions and damaging hurricanes 

 had left tidewater people in dire 

 straits. Hundreds of coastal families 

 were migrating north or west in search 

 of better economic opportunities. 



Market gunners first sought 

 coastal birds with the most colorful 

 plumage. Then, as fine-feathered 

 terns, egrets and ibis disappeared, they 

 turned to more drab species. By 1900, 

 Pearson reported that curlews, willets, 

 plovers, yellowlegs, and dowitchers 

 brought the best prices, but buyers 



also accepted turnstones, 

 sanderlings, sandpipers and 

 nearly every other beach and 

 marshbird. 



The gunners also found a 

 burgeoning market for bird meat. 

 Carolina watermen had supplied 

 a few salted-down birds to 

 nearby cities such as Raleigh and 

 Norfolk since at least the 1840s. 

 By packing the birds in ice, a 

 technology not widely available 

 until after the Civil War, they 

 could now send thousands fresh 

 "by the sugar barrel full" as far 

 as Philadelphia and New York. 

 New railroads and steamer lines 

 helped to open up those markets 

 to the state's shorebirds and 

 marshbirds, as well as to duck, 

 geese, swan, wild turkey and 

 other game birds. 



The damage to coastal bird 

 populations can scarcely be 

 fathomed. Scores can now be 

 seen shadowing any fishing 

 trawler, but by 1 898 Pearson 

 could not find one pair of 

 laughing gulls on the coast. 

 Gone too were least terns and 

 the snowy egret, a graceful 

 marshbird highly valued by 

 market gunners for the 40 to 52 

 elegant plumes that grow along 

 its back between the wings. 

 A single crew of market gunners, 

 led by Augustine Piner of Morehead 

 City, boasted of killing 24,000 terns 

 between 1881 and 1884. They also shot 

 untold numbers of other coastal birds, 

 including 175 American egrets and 1 10 

 snowy egrets at a rookery near Little 

 River in 1882. Piner' s gunners helped 

 to finish off the vast rookeries along 

 Carteret County's beaches, where more 

 than 10,000 seabirds were said to have 

 roosted just on Shackleford Banks. 



A growing market trade in coastal 

 bird eggs only worsened a bad situation. 

 For seabirds already threatened by 

 gunning, the ransacking of a nesting 

 colony's eggs could be the last straw. 

 When a party of eggers raided Orton 

 Pond in 1898, for instance, they 



Continued 



COASTWATCH 21 



