The IoS guide to wild Britain

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http://www.independent.co.uk/environment/nature/the-iiosi-guide-to-wild-britain-2329183.html

Welcome to the first of our Wild Britain 2011 specials. This summer, we will, in association with the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds and the National Trust, be introducing you to some of the best places to see wildlife. Experts from both organisations have supplied up-to-date details on where to spot some of our most unusual birds, plants, insects and animals, and we will be sharing these with you.

We start with 40 of the best RSPB reserves; some popular, others known only to a few locals and the most dedicated society members. The RSPB is an extraordinary institution. A pioneer in caring for wildlife, it is 120 years old, has more than a million members (about seven times as many as the Labour Party), and is the largest nature conservation body in the world.

Its founding was entirely due to women. There was, in the 1880s, a widespread fashion for feathers in hats. Such was the demand for wearing on the female head what should have been on a bird's body that some species, notably the great crested grebe, were driven to the edge of extinction. Thankfully, not every woman was so easily led, and these fashion refuseniks started groups such as the Plumage Society, the Didsbury Society for the Protection of Birds, and the Fur and Feather Group, the last of which met in the Croydon home of a lady of leisure. In 1891, the latter two groups merged together to form the SPB.

Its president was the Duchess of Portland, a remarkable specimen herself who remained in post until her death 63 years later. But the RSPB, as it became in 1904, was not about society women playing at conservation. From the outset, it consistently campaigned and innovated, producing its first charity Christmas card in 1898, starting a schools education programme in 1901, selling nest boxes in 1906, and battling to get legislation on the statute book.

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1. The Audubon society was also formed in reaction to the plumage fad ...

some of that history is found in this fascinating book: http://www.powells.com/cgi-bin/biblio?inkey=74-9780374361730-0

Women wore not only feathers on their hats, but whole, stuffed birds, bird heads, etc.

In 1886 Frank Chapman hiked from his uptown Manhattan office to the heart of the women's fashion district on 14th Street, to tally the stuffed birds on the hats of passing women. Chapman, who would later found the first version of this magazine, was a talented birder. He identified the wings, heads, tails, or entire bodies of 3 bluebirds, 2 red-headed woodpeckers, 9 Baltimore orioles, 5 blue jays, 21 common terns, a saw-whet owl, and a prairie hen. In two afternoon trips he counted 174 birds and 40 species in all.



http://www.audubonmagazine.org/features0412/hats.html