It stands in a tree and kind of wobbles these coin-shaped plumes back and forth. That's how the King Bird of Paradise attracts its mate. Imagine a thin wire coming out of a bird's tail, and at the very end of that wire is an emerald, iridescent, coin-shaped coil of feathers. "These have the most strangely beautiful feathers you can imagine. There's no earthly reason why a salmon in Scotland should be attracted to a feather from a bird of paradise from the highlands of New Guinea." You could just as easily catch salmon with a tuft of dog fur tied to a hook. And they're really beautiful, stunning things, but this is mainly an art form. It's just mostly grown men following 150-year-old 'recipes,' they're called, that employ feathers from a dozen different species of birds from every forest and rainforest and jungle throughout the world. They're rarely used to actually catch salmon. "And the thing to know about salmon fly tying, which is very different from trout, is that salmon flies are just artistic, extravagant, aesthetic creations. I mean, he said that the kid had stolen these birds in order for the feathers, which he would pluck and use for this sort of arcane Victorian art of salmon fly tying, and that he was hailed as the future of fly tying by this what I kind of tongue-in-cheek called the 'Feather Underground.' And when I first heard about it, it all seemed so strange as to be unbelievable.
"While I was on a river, my guide in New Mexico mentioned this thing about a museum heist, and he told me that a young kid named Edwin Rist had just broken into the British museum. On hearing about the feather heist on a fishing trip And by stealing them, he has - in the words of the director of science for the British museum - this was a catastrophic theft from humanity." Interview Highlights "That's one thing that you have to understand: These birds hold answers to questions that scientists haven't even thought to ask yet.
"I felt an obligation to go out and try to hunt these missing birds down because a huge hole had been blown open in the scientific record," he says. Johnson ( joins Here & Now's Robin Young to discuss the book and his own obsession with Rist's story, which grew as Johnson tried to escape the pressures of his nonprofit The List Project. (Robin Lubbock/WBUR) This article is more than 5 years old.Īuthor Kirk Johnson's new book " The Feather Thief" explores the 2009 theft of rare Victorian-era bird feathers from a British museum by American music student Edwin Rist, who was obsessed with using the feathers for exotic fishing lures. "The Feather Thief," by Kirk Wallace Johnson.
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