You may have heard the urban legend. One day a guy is hiking along a trail and he spots a gorgeous-looking feather on the ground. He picks it up and carries it around in his hand, looking at it with wonder and curiosity. That’s when he’s arrested and fined $100,000 for possessing a feather illegally.
Sounds preposterous right?
Wrong. While the details of the urban legend may be exaggerated, it is in fact illegal to collect certain bird feathers thanks to the Migratory Bird Treaty Act of 1918.
The nearly 100-year-old act was put into place to protect birds that migrated between the United States and Canada because of a decline in bird populations. Hunting was fairly rampant because the fashion during that time featured hats adorned with bird feathers.
The treaty makes it unlawful to hunt, take, capture, kill, or sell migratory birds. The statute extends to any bird part, including feathers, eggs, and nests.
It seems harmless to pick up a nest or feathers you find on the ground, but it’s against the law because it’s difficult for enforcement officers to figure out whether it was obtained through ignominious or accidental means. So they put the burden on the carrier of the feather and took away the question.
More than 800 species are currently on the list, including the Bald Eagle, Black-capped Chickadee, Northern Cardinal, American Crow, Canada Goose, Mourning Dove, Barn Swallow, Cedar Waxwing, Barn Owl, and more. That means the feathers of all of these birds are forbidden.
An exemption to the act does exist, however. The Eagle Feather Law allows the collection of Golden Eagle and Bald Eagle feathers for religious purposes by Native Americans. In order to quality, individuals must have certifiable ancestry and be enrolled in a tribe.
Despite sounding a tad ridiculous these days, the roots of the law are sound and still serve a purpose.
You might also be asking yourself what about the bird feathers you see at stores.
Since certain species aren’t protected under the Migratory Bird Treaty Act, picking up and possessing their feathers is perfectly legal. That means nonnative species like House Sparrows and European Starlings aren’t covered, along with nonmigratory birds like turkeys, chickens, Mute Swans, quails, and the like.
So the next time you see a bird feather on the ground, you’d better be sure it’s from an invasive species or nonmigratory bird or leave it alone.
189 Comments
I wonder if you can actually understand what you are writing. “There’s way too many humans on this planet already.” That is what you think? There is an old saying that is worth mentioning here.
Never offer a solution unless you are willing to be the first to implement it.
So….are you willing to lead by example and begin reducing the human population by killing yourself? I suspect not. Yet the extremity of your responses suggest a highly unbalanced personality with an inconsistent worldview. Can you not see the irony of your statements in this? You call others dangerous and privileged, yet you act elitist and expect others to bow to your opinions and take the conversation to nihilism when they will not. Who is privileged and elitist? Who is dangerous? I would suggest that you need some serious therapy. Any person that would even suggest nihilism redress the fact that others do not agree with them….wait, that sounds familiar. It sounds like 1930’s and 1940’s German rhetoric.
Ahh, the mantra of the Fascist –“Your comments are stupid and dangerous! You are entitled, because you don’t agree with me. That makes you dangerous. Sieg Heil!”
For those that understand law, there is letter of the law, intent of the law and interpretation of the law. Let’s go off topic to illustrate the point. A municipality passes a law that says, “no motorized vehicles shall be allowed in the park.” A month after the law goes into effect, a double amputee is stopped and fined by a park official for having his motorized wheelchair in the park. Civics question: is the man in the wheelchair a criminal? By the letter of the law, yes. He is a criminal. He violated the law. What was the intent of the law, though? Was the intent to keep cars, trucks and the like out, but not motorized wheelchairs? Was the motorized wheelchair not exempted simply because of oversight, or was it just never considered that some idiot would enforce the law that way? It is then up to a judge (or the jury in a full blow trial) to interpret the law in light of its intent. Most judges and juries would throw the case out, dismiss the charges and call the park official an idiot.
Fascists don’t allow themselves the thought it would require to apply good sense to the law.
The principle is the same here. The intent of the law (treaty in this case) was to stop the wholesale killing of the birds and discourage the trade in their feathers. It was not the intent of the treaty to stop people from possessing a feather from a bird that had shed the feather as part of their natural molting or collecting a feather from a bird that had died by means other than hunting. Unfortunately, people are rarely willing to engage their thought. It is a symptom of conformist, intellectual laziness. No one want to apply good sense to the law and use good judgement. A shed feather has no owner, and morally, ethically and should be legally up for grabs. Likewise a bird that has died by means other than human hunting, does not own its feathers. There is no moral or ethical reason and no sound legal reason why those feathers could not be collected. Yet the fascists out there want blind obedience to written laws, not critical interpretation of its fitness to a given case.
Ok wait…. I double checked, since I’m old now. I live in Alabama. As long as you hunt in season… You can KILL mourning doves and Canada Geese. But it’s illegal to keep the feathers. Where in the world does that make sense? I don’t pretend to know the laws by heart. But I did read my fishing and hunting license.