First Australian branch of Society for the Protection of Birds, in Adelaide from 1894, hits export of budgerigars

Reflecting on “murderous millinery” of the Victorian-era frenzy for feathers was an 1890 silk, lace and velvet bonnet topped with three dead budgerigars and held in New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art collection.

South Australia’s late 19th Century open season on the capture and export of budgerigars was brought to an end by one of the world’s first fledgling conservation movements being formed in the province.

In 1894, the first Australian branch of the Society for the Protection of Birds was formed in Adelaide and included several influential local matrons, who in accord with the society’s rules, shunned wearing feathers. Demand for budgerigars in Europe had been a byproduct of a general Victorian-era frenzy for feathers, with the birds simultaneously admired, hunted, plucked and taxidermied en masse in the name of fashion.

In 1897, the group made an impassioned plea for bird welfare in a deputation to South Australian government. This including making its case that “budgerigars taken to England by the masters of ships … were often crushed in a small space, where large numbers of them died on the voyage”.

These early animal rights campaigners’ efforts were rewarded with the introduction of the Birds Protection Act 1900 (South Australia) that, for the first time, at least offered the budgerigars some safety for part of the year. A closed season in South Australia, prohibited the trapping and exporting of budgies between July 1 and January 12, had a significant impact on the trade.

By 1914, South Australia’s biggest exporter of budgerigars and other native birds from his shop in Adelaide city’s Rundle Street east, John Foglia, who once used to make between £500 and £600 out of a bird-exporting trip to Europe, had been forced to switch his attention to markets in the United States of America.

Foglia  complained that other Australian states “have no such stringent laws and, in consequence, they have all their birds, caught, boxed and shipped before we in South Australia have ours caught.” The inevitable flow-on effect to the professional bird catchers operating in South Australia meant that they were only earning about £70 a season. So catchers operating in South Australia dropped from 10 to just two.

The Advertiser in Adelaide reported on a 1902 meeting of Society for the Protection of Birds at the YWCA (Young Women’s Christian Association) building in Hindmarsh Square, Adelaide city. Those present were “Mesdames Paton, Ralph, Hall, and the hon. secretary (Mrs. J. Playford), and Messrs. M. S. Clark and J. G. O. Tepper (the South Australian Museum natural history collector/entomologist)".

The meeting received a “complimentary letter from the governor general (Marquis of Linlithgow); in reply to a request for his patronage expressing the hearty sympathy of himself and Lady Linlithgow with the objects of the society”. The secretary also reported that the lantern slides were ready and could be lent to anyone willing to give lectures. She had received promises they would be used in the public schools.

The meeting decided that the society’s efforts should still be directed toward restricting the issue of gun licences and prohibiting shooting on Sunday. As late as1882, the South Australian Gun Club was substituting budgerigars for pigeons when they were “not up to mark” on its shooting ground at Adelaide’s Morphettville racecourse.

The Society for the Protection of Birds annual report presented at the meeting showed an increase of 14 members and a balance of £24.