Displaying items by tag: herons in tennessee valley

Great blue herons and other heron species were reduced to a handful of rookeries after numbers plummeted because of high demand for their plumage.  Courtesy Betty Thompson

Herons were almost a victim of their own beauty

plume. noun. a long, soft feather, or arrangement of feathers used by a bird for display 

During our Gilded Age of opulence and corruption, members of polite society wore alligator shoes, top hats made from beaver pelts, ivory buttons, whalebone corsets and dead foxes draped around their shoulders. After all, status had its price and the surrounding wild lands were bountiful.

In the late 1800s and early 1900s, most fashion-conscious women would not be seen in public without a hat adorned with feathers. In 1915, at the height of this fashion craze, an ounce of plumes sold for $32, the same going rate as an ounce of gold. The most highly coveted feathers were “aigrettes,” which are the long, silky white nuptial plumes of egrets and great blue herons. Plume hunters could make a sizable sum of money for a day’s work with a gun.