Robert Francis

@birdhistory.bsky.social

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Birds in people history, people in bird history
DC & SD | Education policy | Linocuts | Film
birdhistory.substack.com

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This Lifer Pie goes out to the Cassin's Finch, Cassin's Kingbird, Broad-tailed Hummingbird, and Juniper Titmouse I found in Santa Fe 🪶

Also love that they used "near the lunatic asylum" as a landmark for this guy's house

People used to just release all kinds of foreign birds in the US. Most of em didn't last, but there were a few decades (1850s-1880s+) where you could find clusters of semi-established European Skylarks around Cincinnati and Long Island. Wild times. 🦉

I knew about the terrible slaughters we carried out against big mammals in the west - bison, antelope, cougars, bears, coyotes, wolves - so I guess I shouldn't be surprised we did the same thing to jackrabbits.

A 3-day-old Laysan Rail chick looked like "a black velvet marble rolling along the ground [whose] feet and legs are so small and fast that they can hardly be seen." The birds went extinct after rabbits were introduced to the island. Here's a grainy clip from 1923.🦉 en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:La...

Fascinating (and mostly in a sad way) to think about the ecological and cultural changes that took the bobolink ("rice bunting") from being a bird that was "well known" and "familiarly known to everybody" in 1867 to one that basically only serious birders know about 150 years later.🦉

Here are some transcriptions of bird songs using musical scales, which ornithologists and bird-lovers used to write out before they had spectograms. I love that they took the effort to write out a flicker's song as "wet wet wet" repeated 32 times. From the 1892 book Wood Notes Wild.🦉

An upside to house sparrows is that if we drive all our native birds to extinction, there will be at least one bird left that has figured out how to live with humans. From the 1889 book A Year With The Birds 🦉

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Related, with some spectacular imagery. publicdomainreview.org/collection/d...

Dr Julius Neubronner’s Miniature Pigeon Camerapublicdomainreview.org 100 years before drones, in search of better aerial photography, Dr Julius Neubronner patented a miniature pigeon camera activated by a timing mechanism and created a remarkable body of images.

Pigeon Photography (Scientific American, 1908)

I think the squab boosters got this one wrong. (From American Squab Culture, 1921)

Whatever happened to the

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It’s me, quoted in The New Yorker, like I know what I’m talking about. Oh, the places my very weird dissertation has taken me!

Ad for Victoria Chicken Meal. Country Life in America, 1913

I assume you could still buy most of these birds today if you knew where to look, but it's funny seeing them listed in this magazine ad from 1913 🦉

"The frog is almost five hundred million years old. Could you really say with much certainty that America, with all its strength and prosperity, with its fighting man that is second to none, will last as long as...the frog?" - Catch 22 Turns out, we might outlive them.

Farewell to frogs? Study warns hundreds of amphibians on brink of extinctionstudyfinds.org A worrying statistic emerged as two out of every five amphibians were found to be on the brink of extinction.

There used to be a massive international market for pet canaries. From 1840-1940, the US imported 2 to 3 times as many canaries as all other birds combined. Canaries have gone out of fashion, but we still have Tweety and Big Bird as reminders of how popular they used to be.🪶🗃️

America’s Favorite Birdbirdhistory.substack.com The craze for canaries lasted for more than a century, with imports reaching half a million birds each year. But even after they went out of style, the canary's impact on culture remains.

Sunday evening turkey vulture portrait 🪶

Coming back from a 10 hour birding trip like 🪶

There were also paintings showing how people used to eat peacocks!

I've found lots of sources that talk about how small birds - finches, sparrows, bobolinks - used to be sold in strings or bunches as food in 1800s America. I've never been able to find photos, but today I stumbled into this Flemish painting from 1630 at DC's National Gallery showing exactly that.

When I was 6 I was really really into birds. And then forgot about them for a few decades. And now I've come full circle and they're back to being my entire personality. I think 6-year-old me would be impressed by how many birds I can name, although I haven't gotten any better at drawing them.🪶

Whenever I hear about vagrant birds ending up on the wrong continent, I always imagine them lost and confused, consigned to spend the rest of their days searching desperately for connection in a strange land. But I guess that's not always true! This bird, at least, found love in a hopeless place.🪶

Vagrant American Black Tern pairs with Arctic Ternwww.birdguides.com The vagrant American Black Tern in Northumberland has paired up with a male Arctic Tern, and is currently sitting on eggs, marking an unlikely case of hybridisation. Returning for its fifth summer fro...

What did birds mean to men and women forced to live under slavery? Often, they meant forced labor. But they also meant food and opportunity, and sometimes even freedom.🪶📗🗃️ birdhistory.substack.com/p/birds-and-...

Collecting eggs from wild birds used to be a popular (and extremely destructive) hobby. Here's a price list (in cents!) for eggs you could order from one Massachusetts dealer, as advertised in the Oologist magazine in 1895.🦉

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PLEASE please please look at this with me

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It’s rare to see a piece on crewed space exploration that actually acknowledges the biggest obstacle standing in the way: astronauts’ radiation exposure (and to a lesser extent, the medical effects of microgravity)

What if we're stuck down here? defector.com/what-if-were...

What If We're Stuck Down Here? | Defectordefector.com If I’m to be honest, I believe in a future of space colonization because I want to believe in it. It’s romantic. It’s adventurous. It’s cool! It’s also, in a worst-case scenario, the way to preserve t...

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I wrote about the General Slocum catastrophe, historical memory, and our diminished relationship with the water around us. It’s my first post for Landlubber, my newsletter about coastlines, oceans, rivers, etc. Take a look, subscribe! It’s free open.substack.com/pub/waterway...

The only Connecticut Warbler I've ever seen was one that was killed by crashing into a window at an office development. Every year we make it harder and harder for these birds to survive.🪶

Connecticut Warbleropen.substack.com Seeing this bird involves the 3 Ps: Patience, Perseverance, and Providence.

It's more than just a quirky hobby! Birding brings real hope and healing.🪶 (gift link)

Opinion | Birding My Way Through Chemowww.nytimes.com The future is uncertain. But it feels less scary surrounded by feathered friends.