{"id":12064,"date":"2024-12-24T12:48:06","date_gmt":"2024-12-24T17:48:06","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/birdaz.com\/blog\/?p=12064"},"modified":"2024-12-24T13:06:47","modified_gmt":"2024-12-24T18:06:47","slug":"in-the-markets","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/birdaz.com\/blog\/2024\/12\/24\/in-the-markets\/","title":{"rendered":"In the Markets"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Every birder has at least a dim idea of the importance of “market hunting” in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Canvasbacks, bobolinks, Eskimo curlews: there wasn’t much that didn’t appear on the restaurant boards in the right season.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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But it wasn’t just gourmands and their suppliers roaming the aisles. Collectors, too, museum men and private hobbyists alike, made the big urban game markets a regular stop on their rounds in search of rare specimens, and the early ornithological journals reported on their finds. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

In January 1885<\/a>, for example, Boston purveyors offered a notable plenty of northern hawk owls, though pine grosbeaks and snow buntings were markedly scarce. Ptarmigan, shipped in from Labrador, were going for a dollar and a half or two dollars a pair, an attractive price for dealers in naturalia: “From the way several prominent taxidermists are prospecting in the vicinity, we are led to believe that more than one eye is on a future corner in the market.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

From even farther afield, sharp-tailed grouse were “nearly as plentiful” in the stalls as prairie chickens, and “several barrels of blue grouse”\u2014whether duskies or sooties I cannot say\u2014arrived in December. Unfortunately, most of the grouse had had their heads removed for shipping, a disappointment to the collectors, one of whom\u2014”F[rancis] B[each] W[hite]” of Boston\u2014found consolation where he might: at least, he wrote, “the flesh was white, juicy and tender, in our opinion far superior to that of the common [presumably the ruffed] Grouse.” <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Every birder has at least a dim idea of the importance of “market hunting” in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Canvasbacks, bobolinks, Eskimo curlews: there wasn’t much that didn’t appear on the restaurant boards in the right season. But it wasn’t just gourmands and their suppliers roaming the aisles. Collectors, too, museum men and … <\/p>\n

Continue reading “In the Markets”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/birdaz.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12064"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/birdaz.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/birdaz.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/birdaz.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/birdaz.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12064"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/birdaz.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12064\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":12068,"href":"http:\/\/birdaz.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12064\/revisions\/12068"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/birdaz.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12064"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/birdaz.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12064"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/birdaz.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12064"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}