Pecking order: how John Gould dined out on the birds of Australia

Yes, there is that. However, Gould also loved to eat Rosellas – “It was not long after my arrival in the country before I tested the goodness of the flesh of this bird as a viand, and I found it so excellent that I partook of it whenever an opportunity for my doing so presented itself. It is delicate, tender, and well-flavoured.”

> On 31 Dec 2017, at 11:50 pm, Carl Clifford < carlsclifford@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Well, up into, probably the mid 20th C, the shotgun was one of an Ornithologist’s main tools. After all, the main item of collection, was the skin. What do you do with in the middle of the dongs, when faced with fresh meat, why, you eat it. There must have been some grim dinners, unless they carried a good selection of herbs and spices. I don’t think that any amount of herbs and spices could make the likes of Cormorant, Dmuttonbird or Albatross palatable, unless one were truly starving and suffering severe kwashiorkor.
>
>
> On Sunday, December 31, 2017, Laurie Knight <
l.knight@optusnet.com.au> wrote:
> No doubt. Still it is ironic that: “A conservationist, despite his propensity to shoot everything from wandering albatross to emu wrens, Gould lamented the loss of species as a result of the white man’s invasion.”
>
> > On 31 Dec 2017, at 9:31 pm, Brian Fleming <
flambeau@labyrinth.net.au> wrote:
> >
> > I think it hardly surprising that early collectors ate their specimens after skinning them! They were camping out, often with limited supplies, and fresh meat was very welcome. Not just birds either. Gould writes with great feeling of the excellence of a large Red Kangaroo which sustained his whole party when they had run out of food in South Australia.
> >
> > Anthea Fleming
> >
> >
> > On 31/12/2017 10:19 PM, Laurie Knight wrote:
> >> Early ornithologists like to eat their subjects – see
> >>
www.theguardian.com/environment/2017/dec/30/pecking-order-how-john-gould-dined-out-on-the-birds-of-australia
> >>


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