Every autumn, thousands of hawks, eagles, and falcons ride the wind currents above a ridge in eastern Pennsylvania. Birdwatchers still gather there today, continuing a count that began in 1934. According to a peer-reviewed study published in the journal Ecology, this ridge holds the oldest and most complete continuous record of raptor migration anywhere in the world. That record exists because a wealthy New York socialite refused to look away from a photograph of dead hawks.
Her name was Rosalie Edge, and her story reads like something out of a movie.
A hat trend that nearly wiped out America's birds
To understand why Edge mattered, rewind to 1886. On a single walk through uptown Manhattan, ornithologist Frank Chapman counted feathers, wings, or entire stuffed birds on more than three-quarters of the roughly 700 women's hats he passed, representing 40 different bird species, according to a Stanford University ornithology archive's account of the census. Feathers were fashion's biggest trend at the time, and millions of birds were being killed every year to keep up with demand.
Public pressure eventually forced change. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service notes that the Migratory Bird Treaty Act of 1918 effectively ended the commercial trade in wild bird feathers by making it illegal to kill most native species without a permit. Songbirds and wading birds slowly recovered. Hawks, eagles, and other birds of prey got no such protection, since many Americans at the time still viewed them as pests that killed chickens and game birds.
