386 
Least Fern 
Audubon, in his Birds of America, speaks of finding the Least Tern 
at a point far north of where it is commonly known today. He says 
that he met with it on “the western shores of Labrador, where I found 
it abundant, and breeding in the beginning of June, 1833.” Continuing 
he says, “On the fourteenth of August following I observed them at 
Newfoundland moving southward in detached parties of young and old, 
against a strong breeze and uttering their clamorous cries.” 
Their beauty of plumage, the ease with which they might be killed, 
and their vast numbers all contributed to their popularity with the 
feather-trade, and during the eighties, before the Audubon work became 
effective, their slaughter constituted one of the blotches on our Ameri- 
can life. 
It was the custom in those times for men to fit our vessels with pro- 
visions, ammunition and collecting materials sufficient to last them for 
days or even weeks. These piratical crews sailed the coast, killing and 
skinning the Least Terns, and incidentally many other birds, for the great 
New York millinery houses. 
This shooting was carried on almost entirely in spring and summer, 
when the birds were gathered in colonies for the purpose of rearing their 
young. It was very easy to kill them in numbers, as 
they flew in screaming clouds low over their eggs and 
young that dotted the breeding territory. In fact, 
it was not always necessary to use a gun. So dense were the clouds 
of birds that the hunters frequently would hurl clubs or short poles 
among the flying hosts. From two to a half dozen birds could easily be 
disabled at a stroke. A half hour’s work at clubbing and shooting by 
two or three men was often sufficient to secure several hundred birds — • 
all that the crew could skin during the remainder of the day. 
By this method the colonies on Long Island were exterminated in a 
short time. A big killing went on along the coast of Virginia. On 
Cobbs Island, 10,000 specimens were taken in a single season. A woman 
representing a New York millinery house directed this work. She took 
with her two or three skinners and employed the local gunners to kill 
the birds, paying them ten cents for each one brought in. 
So rare had the Least Tern become on Cobbs Island in 1892, when 
the writer visited the place during the height of the breeding season, 
that less than a half-dozen individuals were seen. The terror of man 
was so strong upon them that when they caught sight of two of us coming 
down the beach they flew with startled cries toward the open sea, and we 
did not see them again during our subsequent excursions along the beach 
the next three or four days. 
Two inhabitants of Morehead City, North Carolina, Augustine Finer 
and Joseph Royal, were famous slaughterers of birds in those days, and 
the numbers of Terns and Egrets that these two men and their crews 
gathered for the feather business ran into the hundreds of thousands. 
By both of these men I have been given intimate, 
Methods detailed descriptions of their killing and skinning 
mp oye cruises. From them I learned that they frequently 
found the shooting of Terns profitable at other places than on the 
breeding-grounds. The Terns often gathered in numbers about inlets 
