FEATHERS, FASHION & FLY FISHING

Late Victorian Era ladies and gents had a fetish for feathers.  More than 5 million birds were being massacred yearly to satisfy the booming North American millinery trade. Along Manhattan's Ladies' Mile — the principal shopping district in New York, centered on Broadway and Twenty-Third Street — retail stores sold the feathers of snowy egrets, white ibises, and great blue herons.   Once dense egret bird colonies were wiped out in Florida. Some women even wanted a stuffed owl head on their bonnets and a full hummingbird wrapped in bejeweled vegetation as a brooch. And fly fishing - Fishermen caused ruffled feathers too. Click on the "read more" to find out why!

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