Two years ago, my dear friend Molly asked me what topic I’d choose to write about if I were to write a book. “I don’t know, probably something about presidents and birds,” I said. I had been on a big presidential biographies kick and was also several years into a fixation on birds that was…
Author: Robert Francis
Eating King Can
“So well and so widely known that its very name has passed into an epicurean proverb, the canvasback needs no introduction.” These words were doubtlessly true when they were written in 1901. But today, unless you are an avid hunter, birder, or historian of 19th-century American dining, I would guess that you do, in fact,…
The First Cat War
In 1916, a serious debate about cats was consuming the country’s attention. Conservationists blamed cats for being the greatest threat to the country’s bird life, while cat-lovers accused bird-lovers of hysteria. The conflict was often reduced to zero-sum terms, with the naturalist John Burroughs declaring that “the preservation of birds involves the nonpreservation of cats.”…
Economic Ornithology
How many dollars is a Blue Jay worth to a farmer? It seems illogical, and even a little profane, to think about the economic returns that each bird brings for agriculture. Birds today seem completely irrelevant to crop yields, and many of them are severely threatened by habitat destruction and pesticides from farming. But a…
The Italian Problem, Part II: No Halfway Measures
Between 1900 to 1915, more than three million Italians entered the United States, and many of them brought from their homeland the tradition of eating songbirds. Concerned conservationists watched these immigrants come ashore and fretted that “these people bring to America all their native predilection for potting the smallest birds that fly, all their poaching…
The Italian Problem, Part I: Bird-Killing Foreigners
“Wherever there are large settlements of Italians,” wrote the prominent conservationist William Temple Hornaday in 1913, “the reports are the same. They swarm through the country every Sunday, and shoot every wild thing they see. Wherever there are large construction works, —railroads, canals or aqueducts, —look for bird slaughter, and you are sure to find…
Boy Bird House Architecture
“In St. Paul, Minnesota, the boys like to go to school, and when they get into the sixth grade it is hard to pry them out. At that stage in their schooling a wise board of education has instituted manual training, for every fourteen-year-old boy is a carpenter at heart. And they don’t make corner…
The Spirit of Audubon: Birds in the Silent Film Era
For just ten cents a show, movie-goers had their choice of silent films showing at the Annapolis, Maryland Republic Theatre during the week of January 25, 1916. The Destroying Angel told the dramatic (to some, sordid) tale of a young starlet whose succession of lovers all meet an untimely end. For a lighter option, viewers…
When Birds Mean Death
Last October, I flew back home to South Dakota to visit my parents for apple cider season. My dad planted an apple orchard years ago, and coming back to make apple cider with family and friends is my favorite fall tradition. My parents live a bit outside of town, and one evening at twilight, I…
To Hear a Mockingbird
Until phonographs became commercially available at the end of the 19th century, the only way you could hear a song was to be in the presence of someone, human or otherwise, who was making music. There was no chatter of a radio or melody from a record player to serve as the backdrop of daily…