From harvesting feathers to training eagles, humans have exploited birds for as long as the two groups have lived alongside each other. For thousands of years, a diverse array of peoples have developed relationships with\u2014and traditions around\u2014their avian neighbors.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
They\u2019ve closely studied some, enfolding the animals\u2019 knowledge in oral tradition. Others they\u2019ve partnered with (like Mongolian hunters and <\/u>golden eagles<\/a>,<\/u> or the Yao people of southeastern Africa and the <\/u>honeyguide<\/a>), or domesticated, like junglefowl, waterfowl, and doves. And many more they\u2019ve consumed for generations, gathering eggs, feathers, and meat.<\/p>\n Some of these living traditions go back hundreds or thousands of years. They speak to the sophisticated ways that peoples have learned to manage bird populations, a shared resource often capable of moving across vast swaths of territory. The variety and longevity of these techniques demonstrate keen observational skills and careful approaches to resource management and trade\u2014the same abilities needed to tackle wider questions of conservation and resource management in the 21st century.<\/p>\n A villager wears a cassowary feather headdress during the Asmat Cultural Festival in the Papua province of Indonesia, which borders Papua New Guinea, on Oct. 9, 2013. Auscape\/Universal Images Group via Getty Images<\/span> <\/p>\n<\/div>\n In the valleys and highlands of Papua New Guinea, dagger-toed cassowaries, rare survivors of human contact among large flightless birds, prowl the forests, eating fruit and dispersing seeds through their dung.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n These modern dinosaurs are formidable, secretive, and twitchy\u2014which hasn\u2019t stopped the island\u2019s peoples from collecting their eggs and raising their chicks.<\/p>\n The bodies of cassowaries have plenty of traditional uses, according to Papuan conservationist Miriam Supema. Their shaggy feathers can be used to make skirts and headdresses; their bones can be carved into knives for hunting and cooking. (They\u2019re a good source of protein, too.)<\/p>\n Cassowary meat \u201ccan be traded, it can be used as a wedding gift,\u201d Supema said. \u201cIf you\u2019re sharing cassowary meat, it\u2019s seen as symbolic of uniting people and strengthening relationships.\u201d<\/p>\n The simplest way to keep these valuable animals on hand is to hatch and rear the young birds in captivity, where they can imprint on humans. But simple isn\u2019t the same thing as easy\u2014cassowary nests are hard to find, and guarded by protective males. Collecting them requires intimate knowledge of the forest and the birds, Supema said. \u201c[The hunters] can tell when certain species like cassowary are breeding just by looking at the trees or fruits that are in season.\u201d<\/p>\n Cassowaries themselves play a role in this. \u201cIn communities right in the heart of the forest, there are those who refer to the cassowary as \u2018the gardener,\u2019 and to their droppings as cassowary gardens,\u201d Supema said. \u201cThey can tell if it shows the forest is healthy.\u201d\u00a0 \u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n Three illustrations from the island of New Guinea depict indigenous artifacts that make use of cassowary feathers alongside a drawing of a cassowary bird. The images date from the late 1700s to the early 1800s and the time of European exploration of the region. Louis Isidore Duperrey and John Frederick Miller via Getty Images<\/span> <\/p>\n<\/div>\n This kind of careful observation and harvesting has incredibly deep roots. A study<\/a> of 9,000-to-11,000-year-old fragments of cassowary eggshells\u2014collected from ancient rock shelters in the island\u2019s eastern highlands\u2014showed that most of the eggs had been only a few days away from hatching. That\u2019s a sign of what archeologists call \u201cpreferential harvesting,\u201d said Kristina Douglass, an archeologist at Penn State University, which means ancient Papuans knew as well as their modern counterparts exactly when to go and fetch the eggs.<\/p>\n \u201cIt suggests knowledge of the reproductive ecology of these birds, knowledge of the environments in which resources can be found, potentially people watching or monitoring nests, and the possibility that people are doing this in order to hatch or rear cassowary chicks,\u201d Douglass said.<\/p>\n There nothing innate or primordial about such knowledge. It comes from practice and experience\u2014and it\u2019s quite likely that some people died in the process of trying to take cassowary eggs. But eventually, the island\u2019s Indigenous peoples arrived at a deep, intergenerational understanding of how to manage and track their large and irascible neighbors.<\/p>\n Papuan communities \u201cknow the role the cassowary plays,\u201d Supema said, \u201cespecially those who are hunting and who use the forest a lot for their daily needs and survival.\u201d<\/p>\n An Aboriginal girl uses a fire stick to burn off dry grass in Arnhem Land, Australia, circa 1997. Ben Tweedie\/Corbis via Getty Images<\/span> <\/p>\n<\/div>\n Sometimes birds are teachers. In the dry season of Australia\u2019s Arnhem Land, the spiraling, diving black kites and the keen-eyed brown falcon hover over advancing fires. Both species are keen to feast on the small marsupials and reptiles flushed out by the flames\u2014and according to Robert Redford, a member of the Rembarrnga people and a senior ranger with Mimal Land Management, they sometimes take matters into their own beaks.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n MLM\u2019s work involves using traditional controlled burns<\/a> to prevent dangerous conflagrations during the dry season. Sometimes when they finish a fire, Redford said, they\u2019ll see a bird swoop down, grab a burning stick, and \u201ctake it to another place. You\u2019ll look up and see that another fire\u2019s coming.\u201d<\/p>\n The Rembarrnga, as well as other northern Aboriginal groups, have many stories of the brown falcon acting as a fire spreader; some groups even imitate them in Dreaming rites, where men taking the birds\u2019 role carry lit sticks to unburned grass.<\/p>\n Most European researchers dismissed such stories outright, or attributed them to occasional accidents. Yet when ornithologist Bob Gosford began looking into the practice, he collected multiple reports from non-Aboriginal ranchers<\/a> about black kites moving fire fronts up hillsides and across rivers, occasionally causing previously contained burns to get out of control, as well as detailed interviews with Aboriginal witnesses about the brown falcon\u2019s activities.<\/p>\n Non-Aboriginal people claim \u201cit\u2019s an accident or it just doesn\u2019t happen or birds just aren\u2019t like that,\u201d said Gosford. \u201cBut for the Aboriginal people we talk to, it\u2019s wholly unremarkable.\u201d<\/p>\n From left: A black kite flies outside Barcaldine, Australia; artist George Milpurrurru holds a bark painting of magpie geese in his Ganalbingu clan country near Murwangi, in Arafura Swamp, Arnhem Land, circa 1997; and a peregrine falcon near its nest ledge in southeast Arnhem Land. Ben Tweedie\/Corbis via Getty Images; Auscape\/Universal Images Group via Getty Images<\/span> <\/p>\n<\/div>\n Controlled burns, which are used to encourage healthy savannahs and forestall deadly wildfires later in the season, were largely suppressed throughout most of Australia\u2019s colonial history, just like similar practices in the Western United States.<\/p>\n But in 1976, major legislation delivered swaths of the Northern Territories back to Aboriginal ownership, allowing for the return of traditional burns\u2014and making the recognition of Indigenous knowledge crucial in an increasingly fire-prone landscape.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n As it happens, Redford said, Rembarrnga lore holds that they learned to use flame to shape landscapes by watching the brown falcon, which in turn comes to their fires to scope out potential prey. \u201cWe used to copy that bird, spreading that fire,\u201d Redford said. \u201cTo make the grass come up green, so animals can come back.\u201d<\/p>\n And for as much of a headache as firebirds can be, rangers largely accept that, whether brown falcons or black kites, they have an agenda of their own, which doesn\u2019t always take that of humans\u2019 into account. It\u2019s the sort of thing you just have to live with.<\/p>\n \u201cHe\u2019s really boss, that bird,\u201d Redford said. \u201cHe\u2019s<\/em> really the land manager.\u201d<\/p>\n Whooper swans swim on Lake Myvatn in Iceland circa 1960.CM Dixon\/Heritage Images\/Getty Images<\/span> <\/p>\n<\/div>\n In spring, the rich, shallow waters of Iceland\u2019s Lake Myvatn absolutely teem with birds. Terns and whimbrel swoop low over the water, and the reeds and shallows throng with a huge variety of North American and Eurasian ducks\u2014roughly 10,000 breeding pairs every year.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Icelanders aren\u2019t usually what you\u2019d think of when you hear the term \u201cIndigenous.\u201d But prior to the Norse arrival in the ninth century, the island was that rarest of historical places: a landmass that was truly terra nullius<\/em>, empty of humans, home only to birds and a single species of fox.<\/p>\n The settlers rapidly recognized the lake\u2019s bounty. Today, longstanding customs govern the harvesting of eggs from the migrating waterfowl, allowing residents to load up on eggs during the breeding season. By studying the microscopic structure of eggshells at sites like Skutustadir near the lake, a team of archeologists has traced this practice back 1,000 years, making it an example of how Indigenous cultures can sustainably manage and harvest birds over centuries.<\/p>\n In 2012, a crew of archeologists including Megan Hicks and Arni Einarsson discovered eggshells and other bird remains at Skutustadir. The remains of medieval hearths showed that, generally, Icelanders didn\u2019t hunt grown waterfowl and instead preyed mostly on ground birds like ptarmigan. According to Hicks, an archeologist at City of New York College, they preferred the eggs, which became much more important during the nesting season: \u201cIt was a very marked aspect of people\u2019s lives in Myvatn. They were just eating so many eggs.\u201d<\/p>\n From left: A female tufted duck swims with her ducklings on Jan. 1, 2002; hands hold a collection of Barrow\u2019s goldeneye eggs in an undated photo; and a horned grebe carries a chick on its back on Jan. 1, 2002, all at Lake Myvatn. Wolfgang Kaehler\/LightRocket via Getty Images; Tessa Bunney\/In Pictures Ltd.\/Corbis via Getty Images<\/span> <\/p>\n<\/div>\n But how to make sure they didn\u2019t eat too many? That\u2019s where the harvest rules come in, Hicks said, a set of customs practiced today and drawn from centuries-old mentions in law codes, diaries, and oral tradition.<\/a> For example: During the breeding season, collect no more than half the eggs from any waterbird nesting on your stretch of lakeshore. (Ducks won\u2019t notice the loss of a couple of eggs, but it\u2019s extremely easy to permanently scare waterfowl away from a nesting site, Hicks said.) And: Hunt foxes to keep predation of waterbirds down\u2014and production of eggs up.<\/p>\n Icelandic farmers also tended to create infrastructure for hole-nesting ducks like the barrows goldeneye, Einarsson said, which are \u201clocally abundant, but extremely rare in other places.\u201d The birds\u00a0 happily make use of stone walls or nesting hutches, he added, and have learned to live with losing a few eggs a season to the farmers.<\/p>\n How far back do these rules stretch? It\u2019s hard to say for sure, Hicks said, but the archeological team suggests that the presence of ancient eggshells\u2014along with the absence of evidence that the farm\u2019s residents cooked waterfowl, and Myvatn\u2019s continued diversity of such birds\u2014may link these customs back to the first known settlement at Skutustadir, around 900 years ago.<\/p>\n \u201cFinding only an occasional duck bone, but a lot of domestic animal bones, tells you that the people were only going for the eggs and not hunting the birds,\u201d Einarsson said. \u201cThis is just like today and supports the notion that the present-day egg harvest is based on a very, very long tradition.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cBasically, people were preventing waterfowl from abandoning their micro-landscape as a breeding area\u2014but the landscape effect is that waterfowl never abandoned the region,\u201d Hicks said. \u201cSo what we have is still a really healthy and biodiverse ecosystem.\u201d<\/p>\n Yao honey hunter Seliano Rucunua holds a male honeyguide caught for research in the Niassa Special Reserve in Mozambique in September 2022.Claire Spottiswoode\/University of Cambridge\/AFP via Getty Images<\/span> <\/p>\n<\/div>\n Unrestricted hunting and our modern buzz-saw of a built environment have had disastrous effects on the creatures around us. So has commercial trade, where wide-ranging, border-crossing organisms from fish<\/a> to birds<\/a> often find themselves in serious peril, and must be protected by cooperative management between nations.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n This has understandably led to the idea that human usage of animals is inherently damaging. But as people from Australia to Iceland show, it\u2019s possible for humans and animals to survive, and even thrive, side-by-side. All it takes is care, foresight, and\u2014sometimes\u2014knowing how best to get away with an egg.<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n
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