Note: not all photographs are in the public domain. Please observe credit and rights info listed within the caption of each photo.
The Feather Thief (Paperback edition cover)
Alfred Russel Wallace, shortly after his return from an eight-year collecting expedition throughout the Malay Archipelago, in 1862. During this period, he traveled over 14,000 miles to gather over 125,000 specimens of reptiles, insects, and birds, among them the mysterious Birds of Paradise, one of which now bears his name. CREDIT: PUBLIC DOMAIN
Alfred Russel Wallace, c. 1895. CREDIT: PUBLIC DOMAIN
A Rufous-bellied Kookaburra gathered by Alfred Russel Wallace in Misool, Indonesia, in 1860. The tags indicate ROTHSCHILD MUSEUM, the former name of the Natural History Museum in Tring. CREDIT: Paul Sweet, AMNH
Close-up of Alfred Russel Wallace's tags tied to the feet of a Rufous-bellied Kookaburra. His specimen labels, tied around the bird’s feet, indicate the species, subspecies, sex, and place of capture, and reflect his groundbreaking awareness of the importance of such data—leading him to be named the Father of Biogeography. Wallace described each specimen as “the individual letters which go to make up one of the volumes of our earth’s history” and implored the British government to ensure that these skins be preserved for future generations of researchers. CREDIT: Paul Sweet, AMNH
Close-up of Alfred Russel Wallace's tags tied to the feet of a Yellow-Crowned Barbet. CREDIT: Bird Collection, The Field Museum of Natural History
Greater Bird-of-Paradise (Paradisaea apoda) in display. Alfred Russel Wallace was the first western naturalist to observe their courtship displays. After encountering the Birds of Paradise, he worried that mankind’s need to possess such beauty would eventually lead to their extinction, concluding that “this consideration must surely tell us that all living things were not made for man.” Photographed in Badigaki Forest, Wokam Island in the Aru Islands, Indonesia. NOT IN PUBLIC DOMAIN. CONTACT PHOTOGRAPHER TIM LAMAN FOR LICENSING: http://www.timlaman.com/photo-galleries/birds-of-paradise/
The Resplendent Quetzal (Pharomachrus mocinno), another bird whose colorful feathers are prized by fly-tiers, photographed in the cloud forests of Costa Rica. The bird, which is experiencing a rapid population decline due to deforestation, is protected by the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES), making it illegal to buy or sell them. In the salmon fly-tying community, however, a single skin goes for nearly $2,000. On eBay, packets of six feathers are routinely listed for $39. NOT IN PUBLIC DOMAIN. CAN BE LICENSED FROM: http://www.istockphoto.com/photo/resplendent-quetzal-in-costa-rica-gm636867864-113255255
The Red-Ruffed Fruitcrow (Pyroderus scutatus), known to contemporary practitioners of the Victorian art of salmon fly-tying—including Edwin Rist—as Indian Crow, at the Intervales State Park in São Paulo, Brazil. The black and orange breastplate feathers, no larger than a fingernail, are among the most coveted plumes in the community: five pairs sell for $100. A single museum-grade skin can sell for $6,000. CREDIT: Francesco Veronesi (CC BY-SA 2.0)
The Spangled Cotinga (Cotinga cayana), one of the seven subspecies known to fly-tiers as the Blue Chatterer. The tiny bird, whose turquoise feathers are called for in many Victorian-era salmon fly “recipes,” sells for over $1,000 on eBay and in the fly-tying forums. Another subspecies, the Banded Cotinga (Cotinga maculata), is on the Endangered Species List. CREDIT: Mathias Appel (PUBLIC DOMAIN).
The January 1907 cover of The Delineator, a hugely popular women’s fashion magazine that promoted feather fashion during the late nineteenth century. By 1892, more than a half-million American women subscribed to the magazine, which, alongside Vogue, Harper’s Bazaar, and The Ladies’ Home Journal, touted the latest millinery trends in Paris, London, and New York. CREDIT: PUBLIC DOMAIN
Sixteen hundred Hummingbird skins, sold for two cents apiece at a London millinery auction in 1912. One merchant at the time sold a shawl made of 8,000 hummingbird skins; another reported selling 2 million bird skins in a single year. In the final decades of the nineteenth century, some 40 million pounds of plumage were imported into England, a number dwarfed by the 100 million pounds imported into France. The feather fever was so widespread that nearly 100,000 New Yorkers worked in the millinery trade by 1900. CREDIT: From William T. Hornaday’s Our Vanishing Wild Life (1913) (PUBLIC DOMAIN)
George M. Kelson, godfather of salmon fly-tying, from the frontispiece of The Salmon Fly (1895), one of the bibles of the art form. “We have here a well-bred hobby noteworthy of the attention of the greatest amongst us . . . Divines or Statesmen, Doctors or Lawyers,” wrote Kelson, whose book included hundreds of fly “recipes,” each of which called for feathers of birds throughout the world. Many species have since been protected by international treaties. CREDIT: George M. Kelson’s The Salmon Fly: How to Dress It and How to Use It (1895) (PUBLIC DOMAIN)
An “analytical diagram,” also from The Salmon Fly, illustrating the various parts of a Jock Scott salmon fly. Although salmon cannot tell the difference between a tuft of dog fur and an exotic bird feather, Kelson’s book preached a pseudoscience to his growing brotherhood of fly-tiers, arguing that rare and expensive plumes were more effective in attracting the “King of Fish.” Kelson preached “exactitude,” stressing one shade of red over another, and he spent so much time studying the appearance of a fly underwater in a cold river that he went deaf in one ear. CREDIT: George M. Kelson’s The Salmon Fly: How to Dress It and How to Use It (1895) (PUBLIC DOMAIN)
The Jock Scott fly, tied by Spencer Seim, the fly-fishing guide in northern New Mexico that first told the author about the Tring Heist. Instead of using costly feathers from exotic species, Seim uses substitute feathers, made from dyeing plumes from ordinary game birds like Turkeys and Pheasants. CREDIT: Spencer Seim, Ziafly.com
The Wheatley no. 8, an 1849 salmon fly recipe that calls for King Bird of Paradise (Cicinnurus regius) and Resplendent Quetzal feathers. There are several Victorian flies whose materials are so difficult to acquire that it is considered an achievement to tie just one. A single fly known as the Chatterer calls for nearly $2,000 worth of rare feathers. CREDIT: Long Nguyen
A cartoon from an 1899 edition of Punch, arguing against the wearing of birds and feathers. A century earlier, the very concept of extinction was mocked by many who believed that the earth’s bounty was never-ending: now, species like the Auk and the Passenger Pigeon were going extinct. Punch played a key role in stigmatizing feather fashion throughout the UK; in the United States, Harper’s Bazaar declared in 1896, “It really seems as though it were time a crusade were organized against this lavish use of feathers, for some of the rarest and most valuable species . . . will soon be exterminated if the present craze continues.” CREDIT: PUBLIC DOMAIN
Sandwich-board men protesting the widespread slaughter of the Egret, patrolling the streets of London in July 1911 as part of a campaign by the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds, founded by Emily Williamson and Eliza Phillips and one of the largest membership organizations in the UK. Women also led the charge in the United States, forming Audubon groups and pledging to refrain from wearing feathers. CREDIT: From William T. Hornaday’s Our Vanishing Wild Life (1913) (PUBLIC DOMAIN)
U.S. federal agents posing with confiscated Egret skins, 1930s. After the passage of a series of conservation laws, such as the Lacey Act of 1900 and the Migratory Bird Treaty Act of 1918, the protection of birds became a high-stakes battle between wildlife agents and poachers. By 1900, a kilo of Snowy Egret feathers was worth nearly twice its weight in gold: the first two wardens sent to Florida to protect the bird from extinction were murdered by hunters. CREDIT: H. B. Thrasher, Courtesy of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service Museum/Archives at National Conservation Training Center.
Lord Lionel Walter Rothschild, born into a family of legendary bankers but drawn to the natural world. By the age of twenty, he had obsessively collected over 46,000 stuffed birds, insects, and mammals, employing an army of hundreds of professional hunters throughout the world. For his twenty-first birthday present, his father built him a private museum in the corner of the Rothschild estate at Tring Park: when it was opened to the public in 1892, it attracted 30,000 visitors a year, a staggering number in those days. Upon his death in 1937, Rothschild’s museum was bequeathed to the Natural History Museum. CREDIT: NHM Images
The British Natural History Museum in Tring. During the Blitz of World War II, the Natural History Museum in London was hit 28 times. Curators secreted its bird skin collection in unmarked lorries to manors and mansions throughout the English countryside, among them the recently-acquired Walter Rothschild Zoological Museum in Tring. Late one evening in June 2009, Edwin Rist scaled a brick wall behind the museum and broke through a window before pulling off one of the largest specimen thefts in history. CREDIT: Gerald Massey (cc-by-sa/2.0). (PUBLIC DOMAIN: http://www.geograph.org.uk/photo/1484434)
A tray of Scarlet Minivets (Pericrocotus speciosus) in one of the Tring’s specimen cabinets. Over the course of several hours, Edwin filled a suitcase with birds from sixteen different species and subspecies, selecting the brightly plumaged adult male specimens from each drawer and leaving behind the drab females and juveniles. Among his haul were seventeen Flame Bowerbirds (Sericulus aureus), constituting not only the Tring’s entire collection but more than half the Flame Bowerbird research specimens in all the world’s museums. CREDIT: Natural History Museum, London
A corridor of specimen cabinets at the Natural History Museum in Tring.
The Tring Museum’s press release announcing the theft included this photo of the species of birds the thief—or thieves—had targeted the most: Indian Crow, Resplendent Quetzal, Blue Chatterer, and Birds of Paradise, several of which had been collected by Alfred Russel Wallace. Detective Inspector Fraser Wylie of the Hertfordshire Constabulary offered a number of theories about how the stolen birds might be used—for dressmaking, costume jewelry, or fishing lures—and asked collectors to keep an eye out for these species. CREDIT: Natural History Museum, London
Edwin Rist, learning to tie his first salmon fly with Ed "Muzzy" Muzeroll over an eight-hour session at Chandler Pond Outfitters in Winthrop, Maine. CREDIT: Edward Muzeroll
The Durham Ranger, the first salmon fly Edwin tied, following an 1840 recipe that called for crest feathers of the Golden Pheasant from the mountain forests of China, breastplate feathers from the Indian Crow, ribbon-like filaments of Ostrich herl feathers from South Africa, and tiny turquoise Blue Chatterer feathers. It was tied using cheaper substitute feathers, but at the end of the session, Muzzy handed Edwin a small envelope filled with $250 worth of rare feathers and whispered, “This is what it’s all about.” As soon as Edwin returned home, he began searching for more exotic materials. CREDIT: Edward Muzeroll
A “mixpack” of feathers plucked from the stolen Tring birds, including several subspecies of Indian Crow and Blue Chatterer, posted to the ClassicFlyTying.com “Trading Floor” the night before the arrest. Shortly after the news broke, this post and many others dealing with Edwin’s bird sales were deleted from the forum. CREDIT: Anonymous. (Used with permission, but the owner would like to remain anonymous)
A screenshot of the EdwinRist.com page offering feathers from the museum's Red-ruffed Fruitcrow (known to fly-tiers as "Indian Crow) for sale. CREDIT: Dr. Richard O. Prum
A screenshot of EdwinRist.com's page offering Plum-throated Cotingas for sale. CREDIT: Dr. Richard O. Prum
A series of Indian Crow flies, resting on the breastplates of the bird skins from which the feathers used to tie them were harvested. Among these are flies tied by the Québécois Luc Couturier, regarded by Edwin as the Michelangelo of the art form. Couturier was the first to encourage the young flautist to pay a visit to the ornithology collection at the Natural History Museum in Tring. CREDIT: Robert Delisle
A decadent display of hard-to-get plumes, including Indian Crow, Blue Chatterer, Resplendent Quetzal, Jungle Cock, Argus Pheasant, and the Banksian Cockatoo: in the forum and in private Facebook groups, fly-tiers frequently show off their materials in what is sometimes referred to as “feather porn.” CREDIT: Robert Delisle
A box of Blue Chatterer skins, stored in Ziploc bags, recovered from Edwin’s apartment by Detective Sergeant Adele Hopkin of the Hertfordshire Constabulary on the morning of November 12, 2010. While 63 of the 98 Blue Chatterer skins stolen from the museum were recovered intact, 25 were missing their specimen labels, creating a crisis for researchers: without the location, year of capture, and other critical biological data recorded on the label, a skin was of little scientific value. CREDIT: Hertfordshire Constabulary
Bags of severed Resplendent Quetzal tails and feathers, seized from Rist's apartment on the day of the arrest.
Detective Sergeant Adele Hopkin from Hertfordshire Constabulary, Mark Adams, Senior Curator of Ornithology at the Tring Museum, and Detective Inspector Fraser Wylie from Hertfordshire Constabulary (l to r) with some of the recovered bird skins at the Tring museum. CREDIT: Hertfordshire Constabulary
Dr. Richard O. Prum, Chair, Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Yale University. He provided the author with a thumb drive containing critical evidence that moved the investigation forward. Creative Commons license: CC-BY. Credit: John D. & Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation.
Edwin Rist arrives at Hemel Hempstead Magistrates Court, where he admitted stealing rare bird skins from the Natural History Museum in Tring. (Nov 26, 2010). The case was later referred to the Crown Court, after prosecutors argued that the sentencing powers of a magistrate judge were insufficient for such a serious crime. IMAGE COPYRIGHT: PA IMAGES. NOT PUBLIC DOMAIN. https://www.paimages.co.uk:443/image-details/2.9838258
The author, Kirk Wallace Johnson. CREDIT: Marie-Josée Cantin Johnson
Cover of the U.S. edition